


Addendum: (Extensive) Notes on Difference and the Critical Possibility of Sherlock

by abrae



Series: Difference and the Critical Possibility of Sherlock [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-10 11:53:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 22,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abrae/pseuds/abrae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A multi-part, in-depth look at the character trajectories of Sherlock and John throughout series 3. With screencaps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Empty Hearse 1A

This series, which I’ll be posting as translation duties allow, is intended as an ancillary to my earlier post, [Difference and the Critical Possibility of Sherlock](http://acafanmom.tumblr.com/post/74203296699/difference-and-the-critical-possibility-of-sherlock), in which I posit that our frustration with John by the end of “His Last Vow” is intentional and meant to put us in a position of desiring him to overcome his nearly willful inability to see the sentiment that’s practically bleeding from Sherlock by the end of series three. Here, I’d like to make the case for our deliberate estrangement from John, as an illustration of why I think (or hope, let’s be real - I never know where they’re going with something, though I think where they’ve been is very clear) we’re being asked to be well and truly frustrated with John as a means of positioning us - no matter our orientation (social, sexual, or otherwise) - to be anxious and eager for John to see the things that Sherlock has only barely kept hidden. I’m posting by episode, and in parts therein (probably two per episode).

"The Empty Hearse" has it’s work cut out for it, insofar as it must reintroduce an understandably angry and utterly devastated John to a Sherlock who is only just starting to figure out how much his ‘death’ hurt his friend. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, I think Sherlock has only learned what loneliness is during his time away from John, and that overriding everything is his eagerness to be back with John. Drawing (and, I think, expanding) from ACD canon, this is a Sherlock who could easily say, "I had no idea you would be so affected," and mean it, and Sherlock here does. This, in fact, is his  _modus operandi_  for the remainder of the series: he cannot believe that John could possibly care for him in the way it’s been clear to us since “A Study in Pink” he does. That John is also not prepared to go there, particularly following the fall, helps to reinforce this sense, as does John’s impending engagement and wedding.

Unlike the subsequent two episodes, in which Sherlock’s POV predominates, “The Empty Hearse” gives us equal parts John and Sherlock, and everything we see of them reinforces how very important they are to each other, yet always either out of sight of the other, or couched in plausible deniability so thick that we - the audience - are left feeling very nearly (or entirely) betrayed.

_"Have you seen him?" (be cool, Sherly, be cool)_

_"It is just possible you won’t be welcome."_  
 _"There isn't."_

This entire scene is constructed around Sherlock’s desperate eagerness to see John, and his (unrealistic, though he doesn’t realize it) expectation that John will be just as enthusiastically eager to see him. Sherlock’s been lonely, but John’s been in mourning - something Sherlock characteristically fails to comprehend. But Mycroft here - as, it turns out, throughout series three - is something of a foil to Sherlock’s sentiment, planting the seeds of doubt as to his welcome in Sherlock’s mind, and Sherlock’s expression, which has been one of Bondian collectedness to this point, turns unsure and even childlike here, as only Mycroft can make it. His misstep is equally revealing; where Mycroft says "it is just possible you won't be welcome," Sherlock seems to hear "there's a possibility" - he's barely listening anymore, and one wonders, in retrospect, if he's perhaps gone into his own head at this point. [note 10/6/14: I've heard this two different ways, and haven't had a chance to go back to really look; in the PBS version, I think Sherlock says "It isn't," but I SWEAR I checked this on my BBC download and it was this. But, as I say, I haven't gone back. So. This could all be BS. FWIW.]

There aren’t enough superlatives to describe Martin Freeman’s performance in the reunion scene, to my mind, but there’s no moment so very telling as this one throwaway shot of John immediately after seeing Sherlock, looking at Mary though he doesn’t seem to see her, his expression embodying all the sadness and anger and even relief that he’s feeling in this moment. Take a good look: we’re not going to see John this unguarded again.

When he turns back to Sherlock, John is already slamming the door shut on softer emotions. John can barely look at him, 

but when he finally does, hurt is quickly coalescing into the much more manageable anger that will punctuate the remainder of the sequence.

As it turns out, Sherlock has a tell, too; if John’s hand clenches when he’s feeling too much, Sherlock, it would seem, bites his lip.

When the moment is too much and Sherlock has no words, this clenched mouth stops what might come out, and here we return to Sherlock’s inability to fully accept the force of John’s feelings for him; he has no mechanism for understanding them, so he pushes them - and the vulnerability they arouse - away with humor. As we know, it won’t be the first time.

Of course, with John, actions will always speak louder than words.

He may have just assaulted Sherlock not once, but three times, but one flippant word from Sherlock about the mustache and it’s history. John is angry, but that doesn’t change how he feels about Sherlock; yet it’s telling that in this moment of revealed feelings, John himself deflects by proposing to Mary. Sherlock, then, hides his feelings behind humor, first, and then, when there’s nothing funny anymore, behind an impenetrable wall of solitude; John deflects them onto someone with whom he seems quite friendly, but with whom - as far as we (are allowed to) see - he hasn’t got nearly the chemistry he has with Sherlock (and in that sense, it’s rather fitting that the proposal itself is so very anti-climactic and undramatic).

If there’s one point at which the narrative POV - and our identification - begins to shift from John to Sherlock, it’s during the deduction scene with Mycroft. He’s already intellectually disadvantaged in contrast with Mycroft’s smug superiority, and his youth is foregrounded through both the things he misses in the deduction scene and his childish response to missing them. Moreover, throughout the scene Sherlock’s hair is loose and falls completely over his forehead, softening him. Lighting, as well, softens his often hawkish eyebrows, emphasizing his cheeks and the almost childlike fullness of his upper lip. Sherlock has assumed the essential difference that the hat signifies and declared himself comfortable with it, and with those who would accept it in him. 

Mrs. Hudson - present throughout - is a foregone conclusion; the question of John remains. Sadly, John will never (in series three, anyway) see Sherlock this vulnerable, and so he’s never quite given the opportunity to see the changes that Sherlock’s time away have effected. In all, this is Sherlock as an  _emotional_  child; not childish - rather, his experiences over the past two years, and his fraught reunion with John, have left him open and in a position to change and evolve. He’s primed for the emotional upheaval he’ll undergo in “The Sign of Three,” and  _this invites our concern and care for him - our identification with what he’s going through_.

And the fact that John, of all people, misses the clues - fails to see how much Sherlock is experiencing, and what kind of effect it’s having on him - sets us on the road to our final frustration with him. It’s not his fault; he’s literally not present for these early moments that reveal Sherlock’s inner state of mind - not here at the flat, not later when John’s voice is crowding out Sherlock’s during the deduction scene. Nor, it should be noted, has Sherlock ever been present for John’s vulnerability where he’s concerned. In particular, he was, of necessity, absent from John’s long period of mourning. He had no way of seeing John in Ella’s office, struggling to keep it all in. He was literally (and visually) distanced from John during the phone call at Bart’s, and then again at the cemetery, and how frustrating was that? There, we were angry with Sherlock for not understanding (anger tempered by Sherlock’s apparent upset over saying goodbye to John, although given his emotional detachment at the very end of Reichenbach Fall, I’m almost inclined to accept what Moffat says about Sherlock faking emotion on the rooftop; at the very least, he has plausible deniability). As such, this is where, I would argue, intentionality comes in, insofar as now it’s  _John_  who’s being kept from seeing Sherlock like this. He is distanced from Sherlock, both by Sherlock himself - fearing, I think, John’s rejection of his difference - but more specifically and deliberately by the storytellers - not only writer(s), but directors and cinematographers as well. The tables have turned; where before Sherlock was largely indifferent to John’s feelings for him (“I don’t have friends!”), now it’s John who cannot see what Sherlock will shortly be leaking all over the place.

Yet, we’re still invited - encouraged - to understand John and Sherlock as a unit. The following sequence is a tour de force of cross (or inter) cutting, driving home nothing so clearly as how emotionally entwined John and Sherlock are, despite their apparent estrangement. They are literally finishing each other’s sentences: “Fu- “/”Cough.” “…a course of”/”monkey glands.” “…a complete and utter”/”pisspot” (and note how the dialogue bounces back and forth between them; one serves, the other volleys). 

Sherlock’s intense emotional vulnerability, and its clear connection to John, is foregrounded in the deduction sequence with Molly and Lestrade. Who knows what John’s voice in his head sounded like during the two years of their separation, but I’d be willing to guess - given Sherlock’s eagerness for their reunion - that it wasn’t this. But now, estranged, that voice has become Sherlock’s inner critic, but not just any critic. Where Mycroft is the voice of Sherlock’s intellectual critic, prodding and poking him to hone his analytical skills, John here criticizes Sherlock’s artifice. But Sherlock’s artifice is how he protects himself from the world - his emotional Belstaff, as it were: “Show off” “Jealous?” “Smart arse” “You forgot to put your collar up” - each is a dig at the ways that Sherlock protects himself by appearing to be larger than life, above mere sentiment and human ‘error’, at his vulnerability (I assume that “jealous” refers to Sherlock’s insecurity about his own forensic abilities? That one was a bit opaque to me). “John” is calling Sherlock out,  _seeing_  him not how Sherlock wants to be seen, but how he  _is_ , and again we get to the root of Sherlock’s own insecurity where John is concerned (and our identification with him is further solidified). He worries - to the bitter end, I think - what John will think of him if he sees Sherlock in all his flawed humanity, and thus he has a vested emotional interest in keeping John at arm’s length, no matter how difficult that is for him.

How telling, then, that the ultimate signifier of Sherlock’s humanity - his ordinary parents - are the one thing that Sherlock tries desperately to keep from John here.

I think there’s a method to their mundaneity in this scene, insofar as they both implicate Sherlock in a social context - he is a son, a child, he was once dependent on them - and they foreground his own ordinariness. Yet…

how John  _likes_  it. He’s always liked -  _loved_  - these little glimpses of the man behind the facade of indifference and callousness;  _they’re_  the thing that binds them closer, but Sherlock - seeing them only as weaknesses - cannot understand this.


	2. The Empty Hearse 1B

So, when last we left John and Sherlock, John was looking sad when Sherlock wasn’t looking and Sherlock was busy trying to hide his humanity from John. And… that pretty much says it all. For everything - Mary, in particular - John wants to be back at 221B with Sherlock. As Sherlock is busy shoving his parents out the door, John is looking around the flat, gazing up at the papers and photos on the wall and generally reminiscing; and here, the beautiful play of light on his face and body and the long shadow he casts speak his melancholy louder than words. For his part, as I’ve discussed earlier, Sherlock simply wants to hide his humanness away, where John can’t see it and it can’t get him hurt. This image - god, how much do I love this? Because this is their relationship throughout series three in one frame; each keeping so much from the other - and even, in John’s case, from himself - estranged, yet unable, or unwilling, to stray too far from one another.

To backtrack just a bit, what I haven’t yet discussed is the fire, and here’s where Sherlock shows his hand - as we’ll find out when Magnussen reveals his own involvement in the incident at the end of the series.

No words are needed here, are they? This is the first of a series of moments throughout the three episodes when everything Sherlock feels is visible to anyone who cares to look; every thought directed at John, and all of it apparent on Sherlock’s face. Sadly, John is almost never in a position to really see; which is to say, and this is critically important, he is consistently  _kept_  from seeing Sherlock, so that while  _we_  know that this

is the face that Sherlock makes when he first sees John, and that this

is the face he makes when John’s not looking but he’s  _there_  at 221B after so long, and we know that it’s Sherlock’s hand

cupping John’s cheek after he’s pulled him out of the fire, John doesn’t know. He can’t, but we want him to; having seen Sherlock vulnerable - that very thing that John has always rather loved about him - we want John to see it, too, and he  _can’t_. Say hello to the seeds of our ultimate frustration.

Which brings us to the train. The complicated, frustrating train. It’s interesting; in the immediate aftermath of “The Empty Hearse,” many of us were angry with Sherlock for his apparent manipulation of John - and much of it really is manipulation. To my mind, we get exactly four honest expressions of emotion from Sherlock throughout, and I can’t say that I have any evidence for this except my own gut feeling, so you can take this with a grain of salt. I’m inclined to believe he didn’t know how to turn off the bomb until he remembered there, and that his momentary panic is perhaps part real and part feigned. He’s reasonably sure he can find a switch, and he does, and at that moment - I think - he makes the decision to have it out with John once and for all. To literally beg for his forgiveness, there on the floor - and it’s partly his being on the floor that makes me believe that he begins quite sincerely. I may be getting cultural interference here, insofar as this is a classic pose for abject apology in Japanese culture, so it’s visually familiar in that sense, but there he is, on the floor

and then there’s this. And, yes, I have a huge - enormous - weakness for this exact face. With the wrinkly chin thing and the puffy red eyelids and nose. I want to cradle it and tell it that everything will be okay because it’s this face

and maybe I’m a sucker, but I’m prepared to believe that, of every expression Sherlock makes, of every feeling he expresses during this scene,  _this_  is the true one - the one in which Sherlock begs for John’s forgiveness.

And John, for once, sees it - wisely disbelieves it at first, but then takes a chance, and it’s John’s reaction - John’s attempt to say what he feels - that makes me think this moment between them is absolutely necessary. For, as John says, he “finds it difficult, this sort of stuff,” and his face says it so clearly. Because  _this_  is John when he loves with his whole heart.

John’s love isn’t soft and it isn’t sweet; it’s terrible, it consumes him, and I think this is what he’s so desperately afraid of - feelings that he cannot contain, and that cannot be expressed in conventional ways.

And then they laugh it off, because this is the only way available to either of them to escape from the sheer emotion of the moment. As prettyarbitrary has argued quite eloquently and persuasively, it’s not healthy, but it’s consensual - they have an understanding, and it requires plausible deniability at every turn. Otherwise, how to they (re)establish equilibrium?

And reestablish it they do, however temporarily. We have never seen them so happy: John having recovered his best friend in the world

and Sherlock having been forgiven, well and truly, by his.

And alone together in the corridor, we’re given a glimpse of what they can be, what they mean to each other, and it’s beautiful, and we will always, always be wanting this back.


	3. The Empty Hearse 1Ba (the train scene)

Sherlock really isn’t that good of an actor. Think about it: when he’s acting - when he’s performing emotion - it’s always the expected one; which is to say, the emotion he thinks will achieve something. With Molly at the morgue in S1 he turns on the ‘charm’ - as he does later with Janine in S3. And his ‘charm’ has a pattern: crinkly eyes, broad smile - sexy, but not quite warm.

Similarly, when he cries, it’s always for a reason, and it’s always aesthetically pleasing. This is perhaps why I’m reluctantly willing to go with Moffat’s assessment of Sherlock on the rooftop (though you’ll have to pry his little laugh when John says “You could” out of my cold, dead hands; that’s real, because I have deemed it so); on the one hand, I love Sherlock feeling as much as he seems to feel. Yet, the more I mull over S3, the more I think that - no matter whether you accept the Lazarus explanation or not - it seems pretty clear that Sherlock expected to be back. That is, it wasn’t a final farewell for him. Rather, he was performing the despair that drives him to ‘suicide’ for John - to be convincing before he jumps. 

Which - again - brings us to the train. I’ll admit straight up that it’s entirely possible that this face could be Sherlock acting; after all, he’s absolutely going for John’s forgiveness here.

But, to my mind, while it may begin as feigned, I think this expression gets away from him a bit. There’s too little control of his features here (I’m talking Sherlock, not Benedict, obviously). Still, it’s in the service of getting John’s forgiveness, so we’ll never really know. 

But this…

and this…

are, to my mind, completely real, because  _they have no purpose_. I mean, they have a purpose to us, the viewer, because here we see just what John’s words - especially “the best and wisest man I have ever known” - mean to Sherlock. But these expressions serve no purpose in the narrative; they are meant to evoke nothing from John, because John has already given Sherlock what he (perhaps hopelessly) wanted. And recall, Sherlock - as we see to great effect in TSoT - doesn’t know that he’s John’s best friend. He doesn’t realize the depth of John’s feelings for him at all; so this, here, is his first - his very first - indication, and look at what it does to him.

So, then, what of this one?

_"You’d still have a future… with Mary."_

Why does he bring up Mary here? It could be unnecessary cruelty, but honestly, that’s not really his style. He can be callous and even cruel, but not without purpose, and there’s no purpose here in it. But… if he’s expressing something that he’s been feeling from the moment they were reunited, that he’s been effectively pushed out of John’s life, that Mary has taken the place he once occupied, that would be reason plenty for bringing it up here, and for the barely suppressed crying that follows (which, it might be said, goes beyond the aesthetics of crying).

OR - and this is obviously just speculation - but if there were a longer-term play in progress and Sherlock knew about Mary, but had seen what she really did mean to John and really, desperately didn’t want to hurt him, I can see him being equally, genuinely upset. Either way, I don’t see it as callousness on his part, because that’s not how - or why - he’s callous when he is.

Sherlock is, above all things, an economical man, and that goes particularly for his expressions of emotion. He doesn’t do emotion unless it either serves a specific purpose, or it gets away from him, and here I think we get a little bit of both.


	4. The Sign of Three, 2A

So, where to begin? I mean, what about this episode  _isn’t_  about all the feelings? But, as my original thesis hinges on two things - difference and the things John doesn’t see and/or can’t accept - I’ll begin with an exploration of what John doesn’t - can’t - see.

Which, as it turns out, is a LOT. As in, I made myself cry when I was pulling screencaps for this, because of all the many, many things that John is never privy to. Throughout the episode, we see Sherlock progress from someone who perhaps values John even more than he thought he did at the beginning of “The Empty Hearse,” to someone who is well and truly in love with John. And here… I’m not even going to bother with my customary “for a certain definition of love” disclaimer, because I think in this episode that simply isn’t true. This is the one that Mark Gatiss has been talking about all these years - this is the episode where ["Sherlock effectively falls in love with [John]… but it’s so desperately unspoken,"](http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/nov/07/mark-gatiss-sherlock-holmes) and it’s all utterly unambiguous to my mind. I will say that I’m not convinced we’ll ever see this Sherlock again; by the end of the episode, Sherlock seems to have learned his lesson, and the hard way. I don’t think he lets go of his love at all, but by the end he’s become quite wary of showing it, and it would take something profound (certainly not out of the question, of course) to bring it back out into the open in the way it is here.

But it’s beautiful, and I think this is where our identification and empathy with Sherlock are solidified, in large part because we both watch him fall in love  _and_ witness the devastating aftermath. 

Chronologically, then, the first scene we have in which Sherlock’s expression is not seen by John is, tellingly, when they are at the barracks and John has just insisted on examining the (apparently) dead soldier. This is a flashback to a case close to the wedding date, and if John’s asking Sherlock to be his best man marks the moment that Sherlock truly realizes how much John thinks of him - the moment at which he becomes open to this alien idea of being (and having) a ‘best’ friend - I think this scene marks the moment that Sherlock well and truly and - critically, for this entire series -  _selflessly_  falls in love with John. This is a John who is about to claim “Bart’s bloody Hospital” as being on par with battles in Kandahar and Helmand Province; he’s a soldier and a survivor, and though he’s not looking at Sherlock here, Sherlock is absolutely looking at him

and his face is suffused with admiration - and maybe even a touch of awe - for John. John, in this moment, is every bit as fierce as Sherlock himself; and in the next… Sherlock’s admiration is pushed just a little bit further into something outside himself. When John bends over the young soldier, commands Sherlock to assist him, and then proceeds to save a life, I think Sherlock sees him anew; this isn’t the John who was supposed to have put his life on hold while Sherlock was ‘dead’, this is a man in his own right, doing what he does best, and honestly

who among us hasn’t ever fallen a little bit in love watching someone do the thing that they do best in the world? Because this is John at his most confident and skilled, and all Sherlock can do is watch. If he were the kind of person to put his feelings into words, he might use those very superlatives that always seem(ed) to fall from John’s lips - ‘amazing’ ‘fantastic’. But here it seems a bit more than that; this isn’t the flashy drama of Sherlock’s deductions, but rather a quieter, steadier skill that leaves Sherlock speechless, and for me, this is the moment when everything shifts. When, in Sherlock’s eyes, John truly becomes a man in his own right, out from under Sherlock’s shadow, and once that happens… he’s lost.

That he’s fairly far gone at this point is revealed in a subsequent moment, in which Sherlock is looking up Major Sholto, guiltily clicking between windows on his laptop when John enters the room. 

Pure jealousy, of which John sees nothing. He has no idea -  _none_  - that Sherlock is experiencing intense feelings that, I think, even Sherlock doesn’t quite understand or know what to do with.

And it’s telling that, from there on out, chronologically speaking, we begin to see Sherlock as both physically and psychologically separated from John - to the extent that Sherlock’s arms are literally empty as he dances alone in the flat

shrouded in shadow and so very alone - and very much  _without John_. Which point Mrs. Hudson drives home to a painful degree, yet where he only hints at how deeply her words affect him to her face

once she’s gone, it takes a moment before he can even look at John’s empty chair. He stands, swallows, his jaw clenches as he stares straight ahead

and only after a moment can he turn towards the chair.

The soft, sad tones of John’s own theme haunt this moment, Sherlock’s strings a melancholy counterpoint to the way his eyes dim slightly. And he’s left with nothing but to head to his room to, as he says, prepare to go “into battle.” 

And what I love here is that not only does John not see his face here, but neither do we. We’re not kept from knowing what he feels - this is a ‘battle’ at least as difficult for Sherlock as Bart’s was for John, because he’s losing John just as surely and permanently as John lost him. But we can’t see his face - because, I think, even Sherlock doesn’t quite realize how deep John’s loss cuts. Not yet, at any rate.

Which brings us to the wedding. 

Throughout much of which, as a matter of course, John and Sherlock remain separated - surprisingly enough, not (physically) by Mary. And it’s here that every last expression Sherlock makes speaks of his terrible unhappiness at the loss of (his) John. When Janine asks if he’s got a vacancy

and he’s only got eyes for John. When he and Mary stand apart watching John greet Sholto, and Mary sees everything that Sherlock feels and John cannot see: his childlike hurt at being displaced by Sholto

and then a kind of despair - amusing for its petulance, but sincere (and sincerely painful) nonetheless. This is Sherlock as an emotional child again

foregrounded in the very real, and far more cutting, moment when Mycroft - to whom Sherlock has reached out in a moment of emotional need, however backhandedly - makes mention of Redbeard. And this - god, this is the look John never, ever sees. The one that bespeaks Sherlock’s utter vulnerability in the face of emotional loss.

Interestingly, this isn’t the only childlike face John never sees; two others say so much about not just Sherlock’s capacity for (and to be hurt by) love, but his sheer humanity, and those occur within the mind palace. Especially given recent interviews about Sherlock’s relationship with Mycroft, it’s fascinating to see both his desperate desire to live up to Mycroft’s tutelage

as well as his utter exhilaration at the breakthrough when it comes

This is Sherlock at his most human - something for which John has always had a weakness, but which he so seldom sees. And here, that we see it and John doesn’t drives home how little John actually understands of Sherlock, for all that he's been our window on him - how much he has yet to learn of his friend, and how much he would love the Sherlock that we see.

But the wedding is a fait accompli, and all Sherlock can do is endure it to the very end. And endure it he does, despite the way his heart is breaking. There’s been discussion about whether or not Sherlock’s hand in the Sholto scene is simply hurt or clenching; as far as I’m concerned, it’s clenching, and very deliberately at that. It’s a little too removed from the moment he hurts it, and clenches too carefully, to be a simple flexing, and I think it says everything about how very difficult things have become; how much Sherlock is enduring at this point. This is as close to a breaking point as he comes, when John is united with Mary in opposition to him, however momentarily, and when he’s aligned with the very object of his own envy. Sholto likens Sherlock to himself and Sherlock agrees; but where Sholto is speaking of a literal death - a literal sacrifice of himself at the right time - Sherlock here speaks not of death, but absolutely of sacrifice. He’s not referring to the rooftop of Bart’s here, he’s talking about what it’s taking him - even at this minute - to sacrifice his own happiness for John Watson.

This is Sherlock’s love at its most selfless; he’s dying inside, but he reveals none of it, save for one clenched hand and one quiet moment that mirrors that of his ‘battle’ preparation at 221B. Here, with Sherlock alone in the corridor, we see just a bit of his face -

but it’s enough to know how much this is all costing him, how much of a battle this truly is [NOTE 10/6/14: this is actually something that I think I took out of context, upon rewatching it. It LOOKS here, in a still, like an echo of that earlier image of him preparing for battle; in the actual scene, Sherlock standing like this happens for a fraction of a second; I'm not personally convinced it's meant to echo anything, given that]. And from there, it’s a losing battle at that. Sherlock is going quickly and revealing more of his feelings to more of the people around him

until he reveals the full force of it in one potent, poignant look at John

and for just one moment, the only moment in all of series three, John _knows_ what Sherlock feels for him - and though he acknowledges the weight of it

it’s a (necessary) rejection nonetheless.

And this is where we’re left at the end of “The Sign of Three”; Sherlock has loved and lost, and when he leaves he wraps his armor around himself, assumes the mantle of being ‘Sherlock Holmes’ once again, though - this time - alone, not with John as at the end of “The Empty Hearse.” And John… as I’ll discuss later, having seen - everything - does everything in his power to ignore it. He suppresses the knowledge of what he sees - and, quite possibly, what he feels in return - until, in “His Last Vow,” it’s all but bleeding out of him in ways he can barely control.


	5. The Sign of Three 2B

In the last piece, I separated Sherlock from John to examine what it was that John never sees. This time, I’d like to put them back together for just a bit in order to look at what we learn of them in their scenes together. And what we learn, more than anything else, is that they are meant to be together, in whatever capacity; that they are the natural pairing of this series, and that - as we see in “His Last Vow” - anything else is terribly destabilizing.

If any one image says this louder and clearer than any other, it’s this moment from Sherlock’s best man speech

in which it’s John and Sherlock who are centered in the frame; here, Mary is practically a guest at her own wedding, the paleness of her hair, skin, and dress effectively erasing her against the bright yellow backdrop. All of our attention here is drawn to not just Sherlock, but to Sherlock and John who - in their matching morning suits - both mirror and compliment one another perfectly. And, yes, the show is called Sherlock, and Sherlock is giving the best man’s speech, so at one level it goes without saying that the two of them would occupy the center of the frame. Yet, there are always several composition choices available to any director and cinematographer, and this is the one they settle on; in so doing, they keep our attention fixed firmly on the two men.

Which, in fact, is a visual theme throughout the episode. Because of the nature of the episode, in which Sherlock all but says the words, “I love you,” to John, we see the two of them framed together more than any other two characters - and this despite the fact that it’s (ostensibly) John and Mary’s wedding. Old cases draw our attention to their _togetherness_ :

again

and again

and again

until it’s apparent that they are a pair, in every sense of the word. Even when they’re separated in the frame, their attention is partly or - more frequently - wholly fixed on the other, and this is one of the things that makes Sherlock’s praise of John so moving and meaningful. Here, Sherlock speaks - thinks - of nothing but John, to the extent that he very nearly reveals more than he intends

in an expression that, echoing the one he made when Mycroft brings up the subject of Redbeard, threatens to say more than he’d like. For his part, John is fighting his own emotions in an increasingly losing battle. Here, too, though John is framed with Mary, his attention is focused on Sherlock and what he’s saying, and it’s so poignant for how hard John is resisting giving in to softer feelings

until, finally, he simply can’t.

And for all that I love this moment, I actually love the ones that come immediately before and after a little more, for all the truth of the relationship that they reveal. Because in the one - the moment before John stands and embraces Sherlock - we have a perfect encapsulation of one critical aspect of their relationship:

John, feeling more than he’s comfortable with and fighting it every step of the way, and Sherlock  _not understanding_. The light here is used to wonderful effect, insofar as it foregrounds Sherlock/Benedict’s wonderfully unusual (some say ‘alien’, but more than that it’s  _different_ ) beauty. To bring this back to my original thesis, that the entirety of series three is focused on difference - both Sherlock’s and others’ - of all the moments in this episode this is the one in which Sherlock is most different, and it’s so heartbreakingly telling that he asks “John?” when he cannot make sense of all the crying around him. 

Which is to say, Sherlock brings out a side of John we seldom see - one, we might tentatively argue, that’s really critical to his own well-being - and John helps Sherlock to make sense of the world (a potent, generally positive counterpoint to Mycroft’s own ‘instruction’). More than that of any two other people in the series, the relationship between John and Sherlock is  _symbiotic_

each thriving in the company of the other in ways they simply don’t when apart. 

So, what about all the eye-fucking, you ask (you did, trust me). Because if anything has characterized the evolving relationship between Sherlock and John more than (racking focus) anything else, it’s all the eye-fucking. And here… it’s a bit different, and in interesting ways.

We don’t get a lot of it, to be honest. Most conversations between Sherlock and John throughout “The Sign of Three” are conducted at a bit of a distance, so we get little of the intense eye action that’s been a hallmark of earlier episodes. And yet, what we do get is exponentially more potent in some ways, because it’s not simply looking; it’s switching, acting, fighting, calling. More than attraction, these looks intensify an already strong (in every sense of the word) relationship.

So, for example, when John is begging Sherlock to take a case, their roles are very nearly reversed. Usually, it’s Sherlock commanding John’s attention with the force of his gaze; here, John takes the lead, asking Sherlock to pick something “for me”

which, as it turns out, is a siren call Sherlock cannot resist.

And we’ve never seen this dynamic before. Throughout the entire series, it’s always been Sherlock who’s called, and John who’s come running; but here, John says the word and all of Sherlock’s prevaricating vanishes in a moment of “Don’t you worry about a thing, I’ll get you out of this.” And… wow. Sherlock in the position of taking care of John (for a certain definition of ‘taking care’, perhaps) is something we have never, ever seen. It builds on the information we’ve been given about how Sherlock is changing throughout both “The Empty Hearse” and “The Sign of Three,” and it signals a shift in the balance of power between them, not overwhelmingly in favor of John, but more equal than it’s ever been. 

And this shift is intensified and given particular poignance at the barracks, where - as I’ve previously discussed - to my mind Sherlock falls in love with John once and for all. The gaze here is all John  _commanding_  Sherlock, both literally and figuratively

showing him what to do, leading him through it (and, damn, reading that it’s a bit, um, loaded with double meaning, isn’t it?) 

and Sherlock experiences only one moment of indignation - a split second - before he acquiesces to John and  _obeys_

falling in love with John, in all his cardigan-clad unexpectedness, in the process. I mean, think about it; in the scene with Molly where Sherlock’s internal John asks, “Jealous?” Sherlock is seeing Molly as an intellectual rival. And he could do that here, with John, only he doesn’t. Here, he follows John’s lead, acquiesces to his superior knowledge and experience, but it’s that following that says love; with Molly, he maintains a veneer of equal ability, no matter how he may be feeling on the inside. Here, he doesn’t bother - John is in control, and Sherlock - I think - kind of loves that because it not only commands his action, but his respect.

And it  _is_  John who is Sherlock’s catalyst; even when they’re arguing, and the eyes are angry and demanding

they push Sherlock past the point of indignation

(a potent enough look in its own right - wonderfully charged) to blessed realization

(and, um, seriously, this is kind of sex? I mean, we have the build-up, the climax, and the release…  _yaoi_ , in the truest sense of the word).

And then there’s this.

and this

and, so, yeah. There’s that. And John…

I mean,  _come on_.

And what’s significant here, visually (as I’ve discussed in more detail [here](http://acafanmom.tumblr.com/post/72440720817/now-then-lets-talk-about-this-sequence-and-what)), is that the two of them throughout are very much in each other’s half of the film frame. Normally, a conversation shot like this would have them both on the outside of their own frame; that is, Sherlock above would be in the right of his frame, John in the left of his. Here that’s reversed, bringing them into each other’s space, visually entwining them as much as - more than, perhaps - their interaction does.

The final call, in the end, is issued by Sherlock, who’s just declared John the one who keeps him “right.” John, intensely attuned to Sherlock (who, admittedly, is drawing considerable attention to himself, although to the confusion of everyone but John), already knows that something is afoot

so that when Sherlock literally walks up the aisle to claim John

John stands

meets Sherlock’s strange eyes

and allows himself to be claimed.

And Mary… is nowhere to be seen, visually - and quite possibly emotionally - hidden from view by Sherlock.

There’s one more significant moment between them, of course, and as it’s an effective rejection by John of everything that’s been illustrated and reinforced throughout “The Sign of Three,” I’ll leave it for my discussion of John’s trajectory through the episode in the upcoming 2C. 

As it stands, until that moment, this is the Sherlock and John of this episode - together, each responding to the other in kind, symbiotic, inextricably linked. The natural pairing of the show, despite the overtly heteronormative backdrop against which it occurs. Which, in the end, is one significant reason we wind up feeling so lost and even betrayed by the end of “His Last Vow.”


	6. The Sign of Three 2C

Which brings us to John. 

Who I love, and for whom I have incredible sympathy even after he’s slammed a door shut on Sherlock by the end of this episode. Because - remember when “The Empty Hearse” first aired, and many of us were thinking that not only did Sherlock get off pretty easy, all things being equal, but there was never really an emotional reckoning? 

This is that emotional reckoning. To my mind, John has absolutely forgiven Sherlock, but he’s forgotten nothing, least of all the incredible hurt he suffered at Sherlock’s hand - and, in fact, I think this is one reason why Sherlock ends up loving him so selflessly, because he has realized how much he hurt John, and (to my mind) he feels completely unworthy of John for having done it.

As I’ve discussed earlier, “The Sign of Three” is nothing so much as an argument for how much John and Sherlock are meant to be together, and yet, for John, that dawning realization threatens to tear down every defense against hurt he’s built up not just since Sherlock, but from childhood. It’s significant that our first sustained look at John in this episode comes in the form of him discussing Harry’s absence from the wedding.

And it’s critically important to note here that he’s looking away from Mary when he mentions it, insofar as he habitually hides his vulnerability in this way. If he can categorize his feelings - give them a focus and, in defining them, make them manageable - he does fine; but the ones he can barely acknowledge are the ones that cannot be named, and if they can’t be named, then the only way to contain and control them is to disavow them through this visual elision. 

So he does it here, and then again in the flashback of him asking Sherlock to be his best man. And this is a really fascinating scene in that sense, because John is effectively trapped by Sherlock’s emotional ignorance into confessing something that’s greater than his first casual insinuation suggests. To wit, when John first arrives, his face suffused with a pleasure that we’ve barely seen directed towards anyone to this point

he begins to ask Sherlock working from the assumption that they have a shared frame of reference for the conversation; that is, John assumes that Sherlock knows how John regards him - how John feels about him - and so his expression begins from that place: we’re friends,  _mates_ , and this is the kind of thing mates do.

Isn’t it?

Isn’t it??

_Isn’t it??_

And it’s here that John must say something that he does not want to put into words, because this is not how he does these things. The shared frame of reference he (assumes he) has with every other person in his life has made it possible for him to function. I can’t claim to understand the psychological underpinnings of all of this, but for whatever reason i think he might have a substantial investment in both a shared set of social rules through which ‘normal’ interactions are governed, and in strict categories that constrain and even define those interactions. That is, I think John has learned to be wary of people who can hurt him, and he contains them through labels: drunk, soldier, doctor, mate, wife.

Incidentally, I think this is one reason why he likes Sholto so much; Sholto clearly has elicited no small degree of affection and loyalty in John - arguably much like Sherlock does later - but each man seems to know the limits of their engagement. That is, John is free to admire and like Sholto, openly, in part because they are playing the parts of officer and subordinate so very well, and in such a way that Captain John Watson is free to look like this at Major Sholto

and no one thinks to question it - or John.

And here comes Sherlock, who cannot be contained because he is fundamentally  _contradictory_  - brilliant and ignorant, sweet and callous, genuine and false, ugly and beautiful. Even John can’t escape this, so Sherlock becomes both best man and best friend, all in the same breath, one of two people who John loves most in the world, and look how he cannot say it in so many words.

He tries, but every last look is a plea for Sherlock to  _understand_  so he’ll be spared the saying of it.

And he tries, until the last possible moment, and when John must say it in so many words, as is his way,

he must look away.

This is the John we’re dealing with. Someone who looks away, because he doesn’t know what to do with his softer feelings. He doesn’t want to examine them, he doesn’t want to understand them, absolutely doesn’t want them to be seen. He wants to fit them neatly into a box and leave them be; but Sherlock confounds this at every turn

being both the other person who’s turned John’s life around (and he’s not making eye contact here, either) and a complete dickhead. John tries to fit Sherlock into the category of ‘mate’, but not only does it not sit especially well

but it quickly devolves into something that cannot

be called (though he tries - those crossed arms when he says Sherlock is important to ‘some people’)

merely ‘friendly’

by any stretch of the imagination.

And isn’t it interesting, parenthetically, how seamlessly John accepts his ‘feminine’ identity here? John - who emphatically isn’t gay, isn’t even remotely feminine (by his reckoning) - simply wants to know if he’s a pretty lady, and there’s a rather endearing hope that he is in his eyes here… I just want to hold him and say YES.

Also interesting is how Sherlock describes the entire evening - the next morning - as a “wasted opportunity,” and how we move directly into the last, most emotionally damaging, part of this episode. It’s prefaced by Mrs. Hudson, warning John that people change when they marry. Here,  _of course_  he freezes because his stomach is turned by the food

and  _of course_  it’s the queasy state of his stomach that motivates a close up of the expression he makes as Mrs. Hudson assures him that everything will be different from here on in.

By which I mean, of course, the food doesn’t motivate it in the least. The food is there for the purposes of plausible deniability; what’s upset John here is nothing less than his impending separation from Sherlock. After all

he’s even held on to his keys - they’ve been planning the wedding at 221B, for God’s sake. Sherlock is an inextricable part of John’s life, and everything Mrs. Hudson says here is as upsetting to John as anything she’s said earlier to Sherlock. He recovers, quickly, insisting to an almost exaggerated degree how happy he is to have found that one person he’s clicked with

but it’s not until Mrs. Hudson genders that person that we’re thrust into the kind of heteronormative framework to which the entire episode to this point has been a counterpoint. Only when “she” is mentioned explicitly are we reminded what - who - John has chosen, and even he seems to be struggling to remember throughout.

It’s interesting, as a final aside, how much John’s identity comes under question throughout this episode. Not only all of the above, and particularly the stag night, which reveals a side of him he never allows himself to show, but especially at the barracks, when that military side of himself - which has been shown to be not just important, but fundamental to his sense of self - is questioned

to the point that we see him asserting it, and his authority, in no uncertain terms.

And it’s interesting here that not only does John show a bit more potential aggression when Sherlock is demeaned as the detective in the funny hat

dropping his military collectedness in favor of a more (potentially) volatile demeanor, but the moment of his most fierce assertion of his experience comes not with Kandahar or Helmand, but with the mention of Bart’s bloody Hospital. Sherlock is well and truly a part of John in ways that he absolutely cannot acknowledge - even (especially) to himself, which sets the stage for the final, painful, act.

Having gotten well and truly married, John seems to feel comfortable sticking Sherlock in the ‘mate’ box and leaving him there

and perhaps they would get away with it - Sherlock certainly seems amenable, if it will preserve their relationship - but for Sherlock’s slip. He deflects everything so well up to the very end; uses humor (“now that you’ve got a real baby”) to offset potentially painful emotions, but that one, single slip

and it can be neither denied nor taken back - not that Sherlock would. He doesn’t want John to know (barely understanding himself), but having shown his hand, he’s not dishonest enough to disavow it. Which leaves John in the position of giving him an answer, right there on the dance floor. And… he’s just got married. He’s just found out his wife is pregnant. John’s entire life has been defined by his honor - duty, loyalty - so very wrapped up in his sense of his own masculinity, and so there’s only one answer he can give to Sherlock given the circumstances.

Which he does, in the only way he knows - he looks down, away from Sherlock’s eyes

 and it’s too late. They’ve both seen, they both know - how Sherlock feels, and what John will not, cannot, acknowledge

and it’s only Mary who can articulate what’s happening

for which I think I’ll always kind of love her. 

This is where they’re left (and, not coincidentally, the reason I spent the first five hours after I watched this crying off and on) - estranged, and primarily because John cannot yet go there with Sherlock. And this is where my thesis begins to make some sense to me, anyway; because, God, by this point we want him to, so much. We’ve surpassed John, in a sense; we know how Sherlock feels, and we know how he feels. We’ve been told in no uncertain terms that their relationship is a partnership in every sense of the word, and in this moment it seems perilously at risk, and - speaking for myself, anyway - as viewers who have been invested in both of them (but especially John) from the very beginning, we don’t want to see it fall apart.


	7. The Sign of Three 2Ca

Agh. I wasn’t going to go back over John, but damn there’s a lot happening to John here. And one thing I think I gave kind of short shrift to yesterday is the Sholto thing. So, a bit on John and Sholto.

So, I’m watching this episode, and it’s so interesting how we’re positioned to be suspicious of Sholto at first: the darkly military music, the beret, precision, his rigidity, his scarred face - his serious, scarred face.

 

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that I wasn’t the only person watching who was thinking “bad guy!!” (and maybe even “Moran!!” just a little). He seems like someone who could have been pushed past the point of no return, so to speak; someone who might do anything to avenge a wrong. Someone who might take things into his own hands. Amazing what just a dab of  _mise en scene_  will convey, if we’re already predisposed to think it.

Which means that here we have someone who is established at the beginning as being nothing so much as tight, close-off, strict, rigid.

When we learn who he is in relation to John, we begin to read this as more of a code by which he lives, precision in the service of keeping regret at bay in such a way that he can function. And isn’t it interesting, in that sense, that he both mirrors John a bit here - both of them need the order of a military identity (if not the military itself, having both left under circumstances not of their choosing) in order to cope with things that threaten to overwhelm them - and he makes John look emotionally healthy by comparison. At least John is still seeing the ‘[trick cyclist](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trick_cyclist)’ and seems to see some value in it; Sholto won’t even go there (and I could tell you stories about the emotionally repressed and their aversion to therapy… but I won’t).

John is, of course, surprised

and then delighted when Sholto arrives, rushing over to meet him with scarcely a glance in Mary’s direction. Interesting, isn’t it, John’s attraction to these dynamic men in his life; and interesting as well both the similarities and differences between Sholto and Sherlock.

For his part, insofar as Sholto makes John look like an emotional open book, we have a nice example of how John seems to find balance in people who are kind of him, writ large. If Sherlock’s adventurousness is of a magnitude greater than John’s, Sholto’s military reserve is equally of a magnitude greater. John is pleased to see him, but when Sholto amends the more formal “Watson” to the familiar “John”

John positively preens with the compliment.

_This_  is the kind of emotional openness John is equipped to handle. The small acknowledgement, never going too far, never provoking any unmanageable emotions. And it gives him space to be the more psychologically healthy of the two; John’s mention of his therapy is half explanation, half exhortation

although, being personal and difficult, both must look away a bit, else risk letting their weakness show. John will meet his eyes

however briefly, but Sholto

cannot go there. In this sense, Sholto is almost what John might be, but for his messy humanity - his inconvenient love that even he can’t quite fathom, and which he’s often reluctant to own. John might want to be Sholto, but he not only can’t be, but really shouldn’t.

Because Sholto is, in many ways, the living example of what happens when isolation and order go too far. We all make mistakes and we all have to learn to live with them; Sherlock’s solution - and such a risk for him, given his past insistence that “alone protects me” - is to give himself over to the vulnerability that comes with human interaction; John’s is to compartmentalize and move on. And Sholto’s is… what John so easily could be, and what Sherlock has been - alone.

And in the end, it’s that call to human connectedness that saves him when he’s ready to throw himself on his sword. This is what Sherlock understands - loneliness, despair, isolation. He understands it and its allure, I think, and that’s what they have in common - less a sense of duty, per se, than a well-honed, and so terribly hidden, love for John that keeps them tied to the world when they might otherwise depart it. And so it is that when Sherlock, driven by nothing so much as John’s own pain here (John is, once again, talking a friend down - or trying to - and Sherlock, I think, sees that here so clearly),

calls Sholto out

Sholto can’t but respond - behind closed doors, in private, alone. It’s the only place he can acknowledge his deep affection for John

but acknowledge it he does, to the relief of John and Mary.

And Sherlock sees two things here, I think: that ‘his’ doctor is Sholto’s doctor as well - Mary’s - that to keep John he’ll have to share him, because that’s what a social life means, and that, God, he loves John. This episode is a love letter to John, in one sense, because everyone is focused on him, and he’s so… oblivious to it all. Not out of any kind of self-involvement; rather the opposite. John is so focused outward, and so self-effacing, that he can’t see what all these people feel. He can let himself have Mary’s love, because… she’s supposed to love him, as his wife. But Sherlock and Sholto - both of them have just declared, in front of him no less, that  _he is worth living for_  - and John, who has no mechanism to accept this, deflects it onto Mary and his duty. 

I dunno. I’m making this up. I may change my mind later, but for now this is what sticks.


	8. The Sign of Three 2D

All right, let’s do this thing. Mary’s up next. I’ll be doing two posts that look specifically at Mary, because she’s such an integral part of the character arcs of John and Sherlock - one for “The Empty Hearse” and “The Sign of Three,” and one for “His Last Vow.” Mary is a divisive character for a lot of people, and I’ll say now and upfront that I think she’s absolutely meant to be that way, and that if you love her, your love of her is supported in the text, and if you hate her, your hate of her is also supported in the text. More than anything, we’re not meant to know quite what to think, and that is one very difficult place to be. 

So, what about Mary? In the first two episodes, we’re presented with a woman with whom John has fallen in love. We are not privy to that romance - not even to their first meeting, that initial ‘spark’ John is supposed to have had when they met, according to Mrs. Hudson - and what little information we do get about it prior to Sherlock’s disastrous entrance suggests that maybe John is moving a little too quickly. He’s fidgety and nervous about the proposal (not that you wouldn’t be), it’s only been six months that theve even known each other, and John seems almost to have to convince himself that Mary is, in fact, the best thing that’s happened to him in a long time.

But before that, we’re introduced to her, (possibly) deceptively, as a clear rival to Sherlock. John is alone at Sherlock’s graveside

until he’s not; Mary has arrived, taken his hand,

and from this point on we know that John has - ostensibly - moved on. She’s a threat to our favorite partnership… or is she?

Because, although she’s initially introduced as a threat to the pairing of John and Sherlock, she quickly becomes interesting and appealing in her own right. Her odd little comment about how she is, in fact, the best thing that’s happened to John in a long time is very nearly off-putting, but for her “sorry…”

and suddenly, for me anyway, she’s something more than just a rival - she’s interesting for herself. Funny, kind of cute. And then Sherlock arrives, and after her initial shock and predictable response about what Sherlock’s done to John, we get this, just after Sherlock has attempted to defuse a very bad situation with very badly timed humor:

Which is to say, she has a moment of bonding with Sherlock, however unintended on the part of either of them, that kind of endears her to me. And this is sustained throughout the entire three-restaurant sequence: when she observes that Sherlock would have needed a confidant

which clearly surprises Sherlock, and not in a bad way, and for which she immediately - and amusingly - apologizes.

And this is the thing; throughout this sequence, she’s aligned more clearly with Sherlock than John, understanding his need for secrecy in the face of John’s (understandable) outrage, unhappy with the moustache situation

and exasperated with John’s shouting.

It’s an interesting move, and one that actually serves to deftly undercut that initial sense of her being a rival to Sherlock by making her like him - in both senses of the word.

And she certainly does seem to like him, particularly when she observes that he doesn’t understand human nature at all

and assures Sherlock that she’ll make John come around. Which, I think, is why he overlooks that one, critical deduction

Yes, she’s a liar, and at a certain level he sees it. But he’s just been rejected by the only friend he (thinks he) has in the world, after two years of solitude and learning what it is to be lonely, and here’s Mary both appearing to accept him for who he is (a singular thing amongst John’s girlfriends, if we leave Sarah out of the equation) and offering to bring John around for Sherlock - and I think this is a powerful incentive for him to overlook this initial observation of her. He is, in this moment, intensely emotionally compromised, and Mary is responding, for all intents and purposes, in the way that Sherlock had hoped John would - with good humor and apparent (if nascent) affection. In this sense, I’m not surprised that he takes an instant liking to her, against expectation.

And still she continues to pleasantly surprise. Although she makes few appearances in “The Empty Hearse,” where she does appear she’s practically an audience surrogate, particularly when she’s amused over the gushing tone of John’s blog and his immediate move to shave off the moustache.

And then she comes to Sherlock for help when she gets the message. We notice - Sherlock notices - that she recognizes it as a skip code; yet we’re  sufficiently interested in her for her own sake, at this point, that we suspend, um, suspicion - and no one more so than Sherlock. Here again, he’s emotionally compromised, John’s safety coming before everything else

but given that he does, in fact, seem to notice the apparent incongruity of a nurse recognizing a specific kind of code, he seems on one level to be making a choice here as well. I’ve wondered a bit about why, and my mind is constantly in flux over everything to do with Mary - because, I think, it’s supposed to be - but to my mind Sherlock chooses to accept - embrace - her as part of John’s life, first because he’s beginning to believe (if he hasn’t, really, from the start) that he doesn’t deserve John after what he’s done, and moreover because she seems worthy of him. She’s smart, funny, accepts Sherlock, and I think Sherlock may be feeling like that’s as much as he can ask.

We don’t see much more of her in “The Empty Hearse” - one last champagne toast in which she’s calling Sherlock out; and here, too, she seems almost to  _see_  him in a way that even John doesn’t. It’s this nascent affinity, I think, that he’s attracted to, so that when she says she expects him at the wedding

he deflects and gives her a little wink.

And not his exaggerated wink - just a small thing like the one he gave Mrs. Hudson earlier in the episode, and it seems like everything is said in that moment. She’s a woman in his life, now - like Molly and like Mrs. Hudson, and insofar as she makes no moves to keep John away from him, she is as unthreatening as the rest.

This is the relationship they carry over into “The Sign of Three,” but here Sherlock is even more emotionally compromised, and Mary even more understanding of it, and this is where my affection for her character is solidified. Of course we find out that all is not as it seems in the final episode, but she is so frank and kind with him, again seeming to understand him better than John, and that’s incredibly potent given that by this time John is beginning not to see things that he should - that we want him to see. 

The serviettes are a lovely moment, particular insofar as Mary calls Sherlock out on his BS, and he owns up to it.

And here… they’re a lovely little triangle, happily planning the wedding at 221B - cosy, domestic, and each occupying a place in harmony with the others.  _This_ is the promise of Mary, and if a viewer comes out of series three wanting to hold on to this Mary - and this lovely domesticity - this is why, I think.

Even at the wedding, Mary is aligned closely with Sherlock - his gossiping gal pal at her own wedding

understanding - seeing - his jealousy, and taking a bit of the sting out of it by positioning them both as not having been ‘the first’.

Mary only comes up against Sherlock once in the entire episode, during the Sholto deduction scene; and here, it’s Sherlock who’s out of line, telling John to control his wife, and - and maybe this is just me - but her look of indignation 

makes complete sense here. And it’s gone in the next moment, when Sherlock has deduced the murder correctly - Sherlock’s kiss to her forehead, and her lovely little acknowledgement that she knows that John’s also a drama queen, reestablishes equilibrium between them all, positioning them for that final moment when Sherlock lets slip his feelings for John.

And, God, it’s  _Mary_  who understands - who knows what they’re doing to Sherlock and what pain he’s in. John has already begun denying he’s seen anything and Sherlock is following his lead, but that teary glance

and we know - we just  _know_  - that she’s so good for Sherlock. 

And it’s strange; we have less - much less - of a sense that she’s good for John; we take that on faith, as we do with so much of her, and this is the crux of the Mary problem. Everything I’ve written is how I saw things when these two episodes aired, and I want, so much, to believe that she was being honest throughout, for no reason so much as that she’s so good for - and to - Sherlock. She’s got an enviable level of comfort with John, and she accepts his best friend, and… it’s beautiful, it really is.

But in the context of “His Last Vow,” it’s also entirely within the realm of possibility that this is all a complete sham. I find myself wondering if she’s not, in fact, the true sociopath - the one who knows human nature well enough to perform it to her own advantage - and I think this is also a legitimate reading of the first two episodes. Nothing I’ve mentioned above couldn’t be considered from that angle, and it fundamentally changes everything. And I think that this is part of what’s at the crux of so many diverse - and strongly held - opinions about Mary - that she could very well be  _either_  of these women: the one who truly gets Sherlock, and the one who’s been using and manipulating both him and John. 

And the thing is,  _we have no way of knowing_. Someone will be wrong in their take on her, and someone will be right, and so we go around on this; but, in the end, what we’re presented with - particularly in light of “His Last Vow” - is two Marys, and it’s in this sense that I think it’s safe to say that either is a possibility at this point, and why, incidentally, I’m inclined not to take sides on the whole Mary conundrum.


	9. His Last Vow 3A

Oh, I have been waiting for this. Where so much of this episode is such a frustrating mystery, there’s one part of it that is absolutely not, and that’s John. This is in no way an emotionally subtle episode where John and Sherlock are concerned, and it’s here that I really ground most of my hopes for the show going forward.

Because John is not doing well without Sherlock. What was it Mycroft said back in “A Study in Pink”? “You’re not haunted by the war, Dr. Watson.”

"You miss  ~~him~~  it.”

And God, does he ever - to the extent that he’s actually taken on Sherlock’s persona: here, it’s John who’s socially inept, forgetting to let Kate in the flat, mistaking her son for her husband, and then confirming that “he’s the drugs one, yeah?” For the first time, it’s John who has to be reminded that talk like that is ‘a bit not good’, but he barely hears it anyway, already assuming that Kate is looking for Sherlock Holmes.

Because God knows John is - hasn’t seen him in ages - and, though it’s hard to see in a screencap, look how his little left hand is twitching here, nicely brought into the frame as it is. We get a sense of just how present Sherlock has been in John’s mind - and probably conversation - from how Mary responds to the mention of him, and isn’t it interesting? Sherlock, from what we see here, is practically the only thing on John’s mind, and yet he hasn’t seen him in a month? How come?

Because of this.

John hasn’t forgotten (and neither has Sherlock, for that matter). The look, Sherlock’s early departure from the reception, despite the fact that he’s the best man, and a month-long separation… all of these speak to neither of them knowing quite what to say to each other anymore. As I’ll discuss in an upcoming post, I think Sherlock is more prepared to bury things than John - to move on - but he won’t force himself where he’s not wanted, and John is giving no indications that he is, possibly because (“I’m here if you want me”) he’s also unsure of his place - his welcome - and there’s this one thing that has not been resolved, because, at this point, it  _can’t_  be.

Which is to say, this entire episode is about two things with relation to John: that John cannot function as himself without Sherlock - that Sherlock is an almost literally integral part of him - and that he simply, absolutely, can’t go there with Sherlock right now; and so, as I’ll discuss in the next post, his willful ignorance of things that are staring him in the face becomes the other theme of John’s arc.

So, back to the flat and Issac. John immediately prepares himself to go find Issac, arming himself with a tire iron

and storming the crack den as though he’s a one man army, complete with disarming the enemy; and even here Sherlock haunts the edges of everything John says. 

"Is it a clue?"

"Nope, I sprained it." Sound like anyone we know?

"Just used to a better class of criminal."

Of course, he’s armed himself further

and, in all, this is John bucking for a fight - wanting the violence so bad he can taste it. It’s not just drug addicts here.

Perhaps John is used to a better class of consulting detective, as well, though there’s just a glimmer of relief and even fulfilled longing in his face when he finally, after a month,

lays eyes on Sherlock Holmes again.

And though it quickly turns to something less charitable, there’s equally a sense that John himself has been righted. He’s the caretaker now, of Sherlock, and that stabilizes him in a way that this show of violence and Sherlockian traits can’t, because he’s not Sherlock - but he’s only ‘John’  _with_  Sherlock anymore, a point that this whole display drives home in no uncertain terms.

And it’s reinforced at the hospital, where it’s revealed that not only is Sherlock using again, but John himself has a bit of an addiction as well - one he’s not anxious to own.

Interestingly, it’s not Sherlock (who, as I’ll discuss later, can scarcely hope that John even thinks of him at this point) who puts all the clues together, but Billy - he’s the one who gets too close for comfort, who threatens to reveal the extent of John’s unspoken longing when he observes that John is, for all intents and purposes, ready to come at a moment’s notice. And that he says this in front of Sherlock (Mary here is incidental), really rubs John the wrong way.

We get one last look at that longing - palpable now - when Sherlock leaves the room. It’s an echo of that moment so long ago, when they’d only just met. This time, Sherlock is leaving (“excuse me” all over again) and John moves as though to follow

but the door shuts him out just as surely as his marriage has shut Sherlock out of his own life.

Is it any surprise, then, that John takes it upon himself to both see Sherlock back to 221B and to call Mycroft? He’s attempting, however clumsily, to reestablish himself as the stabilizing force in Sherlock’s life, though it’s (visually) clear that John needs - thinks of nothing but - Sherlock equally as much. 

For there, in the midst of all the talk of drugs and habits and toxic waste dumps, John is concerned with one thing and one thing only.

"Hey, what happened to my chair?"

It takes Mycroft’s oblique threat, and John’s characteristic response, to begin to reestablish that old connection between Sherlock and John

and God how we’ve  _all_  missed it.

John does his best to reassert his place in Sherlock’s life as his interlocutor

despite being completely and utterly unsure of his welcome

And then, Janine.

It’s interesting, isn’t it? Sherlock reads people well, and tells John to stay out of his bedroom. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that that’s practically an invitation as far as John is concerned; he begins to head down the hallway and 

"Janine?"

Yes, that’s ‘surprise’ we see there, just surprise. Not shock, not John’s entire sense of Sherlock shattering into a thousand pieces. Just. Surprise. Janine is here to remind John that he doesn’t live here anymore

and that he doesn’t know Sherlock as well as he might have thought.

John tries to be Sherlock’s interlocutor here, too, telling Janine that he’s sure Sherlock will be out of the bath soon

and Janine, wonderful, wonderful Janine, deftly disabuses him of that idea when her knowledge is just a bit more intimate.

And he’s been smiling the whole time, but for just one moment, hearing Janine go where John has  _refused to go_ , he makes this face

hidden in shadow, but visibly shocked (by which I mean some combination of hurt and unwilling alienation) nonetheless. He quickly channels it into a kind of horrified amusement, but he’s been displaced

pushed to a small corner of the frame by Janine, and he really

really cannot handle this evidence of Sherlock’s apparent physicality - his overt sensuousness - his sexual appeal. He knows, deep down, that it’s a sham, but that doesn’t change the evidence of something that John’s only ever once before had a glimpse of, and he didn’t handle Irene’s presence much better, frankly.

And what I kind of love about this scene, though I’ll be talking about Sherlock in more detail later, is how very clearly Sherlock is saying that he, for one, has closed the door on his little slip at the reception. He’s consciously allowed the wall between him and John to remain in place; a wall that John himself built (though I think Sherlock’s not above a kind of ‘two can play this game’ where Janine is concerned), the one that very clearly draws a line between the personal - where John has made clear he doesn’t want to go - and business, and thus is he so surprised when it’s John who keeps dwelling on

dinner. 

So that what we have here is two men who, in missing the other so very much, have effectively gone much too far in the other direction in trying to both compensate for and appeal to them. Sherlock, scrupulously respecting John’s wishes not to have a personal relationship with him, keeps his conversation strictly on the case at hand, to the point that it leaves John feeling alienated from him; John, longing desperately to be let back in, both takes on Sherlock’s personality itself and keeps in a constant state of preparedness for a hoped-for call that never seems to come. So that when it turns out that John is, in fact, not just ‘a doctor’, but someone who’s come so armed to the gills

that he actually manages to surprise Sherlock

and who, in what can only be described as an oblique acknowledgement of just how far he’s prepared to go to get back with Sherlock, makes his very first joke at the expense of his heretofore hotly defended heterosexuality, 

we have a bit of a breakthrough, and - however tenuously and temporarily - equilibrium between the two is reestablished.


	10. His Last Vow 3Aa

So there we are. Equilibrium - of a sort - has been reestablished, and John and Sherlock are off to break into Magnussen’s office. There’s a nice bit of the old John here, imagining Sherlock’s rather unfortunate fate at the hands of the security guards, but.

But.

So, yesterday I’m teaching about cinematography in two of my classes, and we’re reviewing a lot of terminology and talking about how these techniques are used in the Orson Welles’s film,  _Citizen Kane_. And this shot here is quite similar to one iconic shot in  _Citizen Kane_  that we talked quite a lot about in my classes:

Like, a LOT like it. And I likely wouldn’t even be thinking of it here but for two things: one is the aforementioned discussion in my classes, and the other is [mid0nz’s brilliant observation of the parallels between Citizen Kane and His Last Vow](http://mid0nz.tumblr.com/post/75153373355/mid0nz-citizen-kane-and-his-last-vow-citizen). As I was telling my students, this is one of those shots that doesn’t just ‘happen’ - in  _Kane_ , they actually wound up digging a hole in the floor to get an even lower angle than this for a preceding shot (and possibly this one as well). You have to  _want_  this shot and, given the other parallels with  _Citizen Kane_ sprinkled throughout “His Last Vow,” it’s  _really_  interesting to note that this is a scene in which we have two men who have been the very best of friends, who are both imposing forces in their own right, and whose interpersonal relationship  _is in the process of collapsing_.

So, it’s an innocent enough shot, until it isn’t; and what it does, should you choose to accept the parallel, is foreshadow both what’s been happening up to this point, and what’s about to happen when John sees Sherlock present Janine with the ring.

And, yeah, that’s just shock on John’s face that Sherlock would take it that far. Which is to say, no it absolutely isn’t. John has eyes for nothing but that ring; he isn’t looking at Sherlock to see if he’s serious, he isn’t gaping in horrified amusement as he was back at the flat. He’s staring at that ring and, remember how Ian McKellan has said of Martin Freeman that he can convey two thoughts in one expression so seemingly effortlessly? That’s what we’re seeing here: John shocked by a feeling provoked by the ring that he cannot acknowledge to himself, and John horrified by Sherlock’s manipulativeness. 

That he embraces the horror

and buries the other deep inside marks a turning point in their relationship, one from which they will not recover for the remainder of “His Last Vow.”  _Sherlock has effectively given John an out_  - a way to distance himself emotionally from Sherlock that allows them to keep their friendship, such as it is at this point, intact. Love, Sherlock explains, is human error

and if John is willing to believe that of him - and he is, he  _must,_ because that memory of a  _feeling_  Sherlock is, as yet, too much for John - Sherlock will grasp it with both hands as the only way for both of them to go forward in the wake of his one great mistake.

And if John is at all sitting on the fence about this decision - however unconsciously made - to understand Sherlock as fundamentally unfeeling, it only takes the threat of losing him again

\- that breathless “ _Oh my —_ " that’s so like the one from St. Bart’s - and then nearly losing him once again

to drive home to John how very vulnerable his heart is with regards to Sherlock. Where Sherlock - as I’ll discuss later - finally learns that, with John, it’s friends who keep him safe, bring him back to life again and again, John is learning the opposite - that human error, that this terrifying sentiment he has for Sherlock, will bring him down, and he effectively shuts himself off from it entirely; and this is the other, very clear theme of the episode. That John  _must_  willfully see Sherlock as unfeeling if his own heart is going to survive intact, because if Sherlock is unfeeling, then he cannot possibly feel for John what John has seen with his own eyes, and John thus is not compelled to feel torn in two by it or, God forbid, acknowledge it.

This willfulness is driven home both in the scene with Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade, the three of them the people whose lives Sherlock saved before (even in the Lazarus scenario), when John sits in his returned chair

and asks, without a hint of irony, “Why would he care? He’s Sherlock - who would he bother protecting?”

And this is where the fruits of all Sherlock’s efforts to push John away, to give him an out when their mutual feelings threaten to damage their friendship irreparably, are realized. John has drunk the Kool-Aid and is prepared to believe the very least of Sherlock, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

But as willful as this is, it doesn’t hold a candle to what John sees - or rather fails to see - at Appledore. Magnussen is watching the video of the fire on endless repeat, says in so many words, “But look how you care for John Watson,” and all John sees is himself in the fire. Which, as I’ve said before, fair enough - he was put in a fire.

But he patently  _fails_  to see Sherlock here, despite the very clear evidence that not only was Sherlock there,  _caring_ , but that it was very clearly John who was the sole recipient of that care. John is emotionally estranged from Sherlock, partly of his own doing, partly - as I’ll discuss later - of Sherlock’s doing, and as a result, in the end, he misses the  _other_  meaningful look that Sherlock gives him

just before Sherlock changes his own life irrevocably.

Which brings us to their goodbye, and as utterly frustrating as the distance between them - not to mention our own distance from them - is in this scene, it’s the logical conclusion to everything that’s come before. They are here both emotionally and physically estranged because each has wished them to be, however misguided their reasons. John has long since walked away from a sense of Sherlock’s humanity, because he simply isn’t equipped, at this point, to deal with its implications. And Sherlock not only lets him, but encourages it as a means of remaining in each other’s lives and, now, memories without regret or horrifying awkwardness.

Each plays his part here, but they are parts and I think both of them know it. John laughs where he’s supposed to, plays straight man to Sherlock’s deflecting jokes, and I think here they both know that this is the best they can do; there’s no room in a civilized encounter for anything more. John does better at keeping his distance at first: where Sherlock is feeling everything keenly at this point, the camera coming in close on him (and his beautiful eyes,  _sob_ ) repeatedly

John is kept at a distance - keeps himself at a distance - 

until he can’t, and it’s noteworthy that his face begins to reveal more than he’d like once we can really see it.

And when John is at his most military, prepared to take a shot (to the heart, to extend that metaphor to its painful conclusion) that he’s not sure he can survive, Sherlock gives him one last out

and John takes it - and Sherlock’s hand, when offered,

no matter how  _wrong_  it all feels to him. 

And we might think this is all of it, the whole extent of what John feels for Sherlock now, but for this face - 

the one that looks down, away, because he’s feeling  _too much_  and there’s nothing he can do. He doesn’t watch Sherlock go because he  _can’t_  - he can’t go there, he can’t let himself see Sherlock for who he is, because he cannot let himself love Sherlock back.

If I sound like I’m waxing romantic here, maybe I am; but this is what I see, and - paradoxically, perhaps - this is what gives me hope and constitutes the basis of my argument in the original piece. Because  _we_  know what Sherlock is like. John may not be able to see Sherlock pull him out of the fire, may not be able to see who Sherlock would ever be protecting, but  _we_  are, and we also see - know - what it’s costing both Sherlock and John for John not to see it himself. We  _want_  him to know Sherlock the way we’ve come to know him, and the narrative is what puts us in that position. In “His Last Vow,” John is two things: unhinged and utterly uncentered without Sherlock, and completely, willfully oblivious to how Sherlock feels about him.  _They_  want us to see Sherlock in a way they do not allow John to see him, and this, above all else, gives me hope that they’re going somewhere with it all. 

Because what we want now, more than anything, is a  _real_  reconciliation - one that can acknowledge, if not reciprocate - the human error that Sherlock’s fallen prey to; and, again, isn’t that something? John, our everyman, our point of view, our window on Sherlock for so long, now is falling behind our own understanding, and in so doing we’re put in the really rather extraordinary position of having hopes for him that might possibly even run counter to our own ways of thinking about male friendship. For those of us who ship Johnlock, it’s not so extraordinary (more frustrating than anything, really), but what of that audience member who maybe has always identified with John more strongly than not? Who’s maybe a man himself, his sense of self informed by a heteronormative framework of marriage, work, duty? I would tentatively argue that that viewer wants this reconciliation as much as the shippers, and  _that_  is a really interesting thing indeed. Because, in identifying with John and then watching him fall so short throughout this episode, we’re in a potential position to hope against even our own self-interest that he and Sherlock will eventually be well and truly reconciled, and I think that’s kind of amazing.

So, why does John stay with Mary? I think this audience I’m speaking of would know, in part because I was sitting next to one of them the second time I watched “His Last Vow” the whole way through. For some reason, my husband - [my terribly honest, dutiful, and emotionally repressed husband](../../1148621) - was giving an unsolicited running commentary of every last thought he was having while watching the episode, and the one that stands out strongest to me is when he blurted out - when John tells Mary that the problems of her future are his privilege (husband said “ours” at the same time) - “That’s what you do in a marriage.”

And that’s it - I can offer no ‘argument’ for why he stays except this: Mary is pregnant, John is married to her, and he has vowed to stay with her, presumably, for better or worse. This is all certainly worse, and it’s possible that he wouldn’t have stayed had Sherlock not made it very clear that he thinks it’s what John should do (for his own reasons, which I’ll discuss later), but he has Sherlock’s blessing to stay, and his sense of honor and duty dictate that he should, and so he does because this is the kind of man John is.

In the end, though, for everything that’s happened, for all the estrangement and their distant, devastating farewell,

_no one_  is happier than John to see Sherlock come back.


	11. His Last Vow 3B

Okay. I guess I have a bit of a PSA before I start on this part of my analysis.

I’ve been kind of dreading getting into this part of this series, because there seem to be a LOT of very strong feelings circulating around the question of Mary (I’m doing Mary first, if for no other reason than I needed to suss her out before I move on to Sherlock in this episode), and I am absolutely  _not interested_  in getting into it with anyone. I am making no argument for  _anything_  in this series - I am not arguing for a Johnlock endgame, I am not arguing that John and Sherlock are gay, straight, bi, or any other specific sexual/romantic identity, I am not arguing for Mary’s character to go one way or another; I’m simply writing what it is that I think I see, nothing more, nothing less. If for no other reason than I have a really appalling track record when it comes to prognostication - especially where Moffat and Gatiss are concerned, but I never got it right with  _The X-Files_  back in the day, either.

So, if you read this part, please bear this in mind. You’re more than welcome to disagree with me, but I won’t be responding to anything of the “but what about this?” or “you missed this,” or even “this is great, but” variety. It’s not that I don’t value other opinions, but just that this series has always been my way of sussing this out for myself. I don’t want anyone to feel like they’ve been misled (e.g., “You promised us Johnlock, WTF is this?!”) or that I’m blowing them off, so I’d like to be as transparent as possible with this in mind.

So. If all of this hasn’t turned you off, on to Mary. And, um, here’s the thing. I thought I knew what I was going to write up to the moment I started pulling screencaps, and then one idea of her started to assert itself more strongly than the others.

Specifically, I think Mary really does want to come in from the cold. This doesn’t mean that Mary is a ‘good’ person; she herself seems pretty unequivocal about the things she’s done, and while she seems to have justified them to herself, she also knows that they are well outside the law. But the evidence, to me, suggests that - no matter what the circumstances of their meeting - she (now) genuinely loves John.** She may or may not have been planted to meet him - it would make for an interesting twist - but not only her stated affections, but also her very real irritation with John’s ‘abnormal attraction’ to Sherlock, 

which isn’t hard to imagine given how much Sherlock seems to have been on John’s mind, suggests the kind of love that puts up with the bad as well as values the good.

What I’m getting at here is that she seems fairly three-dimensional with John - frustration, bafflement,

attraction.

At the same time, it seems less Sherlock that she’s irritated with than John’s obsession with him; she is towards Sherlock as she always has been - sardonically bemused

or even outright amused by his observations

in such a way as speaks of nuance in her character. She’s neither the paragon of womanly virtue of ACD’s Mary Morstan, nor is she  _mwahaha_ 'ing her way through her various machinations. She's  _straightforward_ , and it’s at once chilling and an interesting aspect of her personality; in contrast with Irene, she (appears to be) playing no games, and thus does she reveal a cold side

at the same time as she expresses regret

and it’s that expression of regret - “I truly am” - that I find so intriguing, because it’s so very  _unnecessary_. In much the same way as Sherlock, Mary seems economical above all else - no expression or action wasted, and I can’t help but feel that it’s in those small gestures and expressions that we get a sense of who she ‘really’ is. If she’s genuinely trying to kill Sherlock, in cold blood, there’s no reason for her to express any regret; yet, she does. Similarly, if it’s Sherlock’s death she wants, there’s nothing stopping her from just pulling the plug on him when she’s alone with him at night in the hospital.

It seems secluded enough, and she’d need only wear a pair of gloves and no one would be the wiser; yet all she demands is that he not tell John. She’s got a lot of power in this moment, and I have a hard time believing she wouldn’t use it if she really wanted to.

Is the shot surgical? I’d say yes, for a certain - legal, perhaps - definition of surgery. If you’ve ever had surgery in the US, you’ve probably had to sign documentation stating that, in effect, you understand the potential risks of your procedure, because there’s really no surgery that’s 100% safe. I agree with my husband when he says that the story Sherlock tells seems accurate - that if she’d wanted Sherlock dead she could have killed him easily. I think she shoots him in the place where he has the best chance of pulling through, but it’s by no means guaranteed. He fights his way back, and it’s touch and go, but I think she does her best to give him that chance to fight. That doesn’t absolve the shot, obviously; but I do think that it makes it more pragmatic than not - less pure evil than the best of a number of bad options in the moment.

So, why?

In a word, John. Above all, Mary seems to understand what taking Sherlock away from John would do to him; thus the ‘surgical’ hit, thus the warning, thus the expression she makes when Sherlock is going into cardiac arrest.

This is the only time during the entire conversation when her mask drops and she looks genuinely afraid, and - while this may be a somewhat romantic take on it - I think she’s afraid precisely because she knows this is the one thing John would not forgive her for. 

I’ve seen discussion of her ‘coldness’ throughout this scene, and she’s certainly playing it close to the vest, but to my mind this has everything to do with her absolute desire that they not see her cry, so to speak. We know that she’s capable of expressing true hurt

but by the time they’ve returned to 221B she has pushed those feelings away and covered them with an expression that, to my mind, is entirely cynical and - as such - self-protective.

If they’re going to be businesslike, so is she, even when her feelings for John

and even her appreciation of Sherlock’s own machinations

peek through. 

But, perhaps more than anything, the thing that gives me pause in closing the book on Mary is this one throwaway moment:

"Oh, come on, love. Don’t be like all the rest."

This is what Billy says to Mary, and  _damned if she doesn’t stop and put spare change in his bucket_. Why? What self-respecting sociopath would do this for someone who - at least on the surface (and she does appear to be surprised to see him when he puts the phone in her hand) - can do nothing for her? He serves no purpose to her, and giving him change even less, and yet she does it, and I cannot help but feel that  _this_  is Mary, because it’s the one time when she doesn’t seem to be (possibly) performing for anyone.

It’s for this reason, above all others, that I choose to see this

and this

as genuine, no matter what has come before, and why - as of this writing - I see Mary as a far more complex character than a good/bad dichotomy would suggest. She’s not someone who has renounced her past; as her encounter with Magnussen in his office suggests, she seems perfectly prepared to do what she must in order to preserve what safety she’s found. She’s no Madonna - and thank God for that - but rather a woman who happens to be pregnant, who has a past, who perhaps wants a different future, but who hasn’t just shelved everything in shedding her past identity. Her observation that Sherlock’s brought them to his parents’ house for a reason says that she’s still far more shrewd and observant than hopelessly romantic John; she knows that something else is up, but is incapacitated before she can get much further than her observation.

Even her final promise to Sherlock seems to suggest as much, and in this sense I think that, for Sherlock (as I’ll discuss later), she’s an acceptable substitute for him in John’s life. This is where my discussion of her gets a bit murky and requires more discussion of Sherlock, so I’ll leave it here with this one last screencap of her looking sad having said goodbye - again, somewhat unnecessarily, given that Mycroft is an unknown quantity to her, presumably, and John has already seen her be less emotional with regards to Sherlock. Which is to say, she has no need to perform here; she could just stand next to him, stoically, but she looks away, down, and seems to be moved by their farewell.  
  


 

And, yes. It could all be a great lie - that possibility will continue to exist until we’re informed otherwise (or it’s confirmed). But, in the absence of that information, I choose to concentrate on what seems to make her a far more interesting character at second glance than I had originally thought.

**It should be said that, yes, this could all be evidence of how very good she is at deception - I agree. As I wrote earlier, she could well be the true sociopath of the series, and I think we’re supposed to be left with this lingering doubt. That said, not only have others argued this more thoroughly than I could, but I think that therein lies madness. YMMV.


	12. His Last Vow 3C

Well, this is it: Sherlock. This is part one of a probable three-parter, simply because there is so much to suss out. I have my own feelings about why Sherlock effectively convinces John to stay with Mary when John might (?) be on the fence about it, and you may or may not agree with me. My take is sort of the sum total of everything I’ve seen and talked about up to this point; as always, please feel free to disagree.

So, slightly less defensive than the last time; I think it’s only natural when we’re at a point when the ideas involve more conjecture than before. Nonetheless, I do see some very specific things going on with Sherlock in this episode, and all of them point to two things for me: one, that Sherlock has decided (“decided” being the operative word here, and I wonder how much of this is self-defensiveness) that he will respect John’s apparent wishes and not engage with him on an emotional - sentimental - level; and two, related to this, Sherlock believes… or, rather,  _doesn’t_  believe that John could ever possibly respond to him in a ‘sentimental’ way. I’ll leave ‘sentiment’ for you to define - for my part, I think it’s fairly straightforward: Sherlock doesn’t think that John thinks much about him at all, in any way.

We know better, of course; for once in series three, we’ve had a rather unique insight into what’s happening in John’s mind. It doesn’t last long, but it’s intimately tied up in our very first introduction to him, so many years ago, when he was alone and hurting and wondering what to do. Then, he was haunted (tempted) by memories of war; now, there’s that, but ‘war’ - temptation - has taken on a familiar face:

Sherlock, of course, knows nothing of this, nor will he for the remainder of series three, which is one of the things that constitutes the great tragedy of this episode.

For his part, Sherlock has - amazingly enough - decided to go undercover as a drug addict in a crack den in John’s neighborhood.

It may be for the Work, but there’s more than a hint of licking one’s wounds here, putting himself close to John without being quite close enough.

I’ve seen a number of people comment on the appeal of high!Sherlock, and while I feel really, really conflicted about this, I kind of see it, too. I think he seems appealing not because he’s high, per se, but because it brings out a differently emotionally honest side of him. If alcohol, in “The Sign of Three,” made Sherlock fuzzy and warm, whatever he’s been using here brings out something much more raw. His face isn’t schooled as usual, but seems to reveal, in fleeting expressions we’ve barely ever seen before on him, some of the hurt and anger he may have been nurturing since the night he left the wedding reception.

There’s a wonderful sullenness here, partly over what he knows Molly will find, but even these other throwaway expressions

suggest an openness that we rarely associate with Sherlock. Here, in contrast with the drunken scene, it’s not softer emotions that never see the light of day coming out to play, but rather - it seems to me - a side of Sherlock he has more trouble containing. This is his impatience, ire, even raw excitement - the side of himself he (quite literally, it would seem) keeps locked up deep inside

playing on his face in ways he simply doesn’t allow when he’s in full control of himself. It’s not difficult to imagine this as an echo of an adolescent Sherlock, particularly when he comes face-to-face with Mycroft

huddling on his chair in all his glorious sulkiness.

It’s interesting that, here, John begins in a more paternal(istic) position, quickly resuming his role of more simpatico best friend against  _Mycroft’s_  paternalism

once  ~~he sees his chair is gone~~  he’s in a position to do so.

Is Sherlock using Janine to get to Magnussen’s office? Absolutely. But by the time he gets out of the bath and dressed, it’s safe to assume, I think, that this slightly more volatile Sherlock is still with us. As such, I think we catch a few glimmers of something more than just Sherlock’s satisfaction with his own cleverness in deceiving Janine; underlying this scene, to my mind, is a hint of ‘two can play this game’.

I mean, she’s not even in the room yet - her back is to them both and this smug satisfaction

is the expression on his face. And this

is the effect. They are visually - physically - distanced; moreover, 221B isn’t the space we’ve become familiar with to this point. We’re on an oppositional axis to the one we know, and in this sense it becomes rather alien. Thus, where we’re used to John and Sherlock’s chairs being the anchors of the room, facing each other in symmetry with the fireplace/couch, here we’re looking at (Mary’s) horned skull - visually separating John and Sherlock, who sit caddy-corner to one another. In some ways, I think they’re never further apart emotionally in this episode than they are here, and it’s interesting that both the specter of Mary and the presence of Janine are a key catalyst for this alienation.

Throughout this scene, I can’t help but wonder where the line is between Sherlock’s boyfriend performance and any ‘real’ experience of their physicality - we later learn that they haven’t actually slept together, but there’s a physical closeness here that we’ve never seen with Sherlock before. Janine makes herself at home on Sherlock’s lap

even when John seems to recognize what’s going on, much to Sherlock’s irritation, and then we have that tantalizing kiss, and here it’s kind of worth lightening the frame a bit to see the expression on Sherlock’s face. Because

… pretty. And

his eyes are still closed a bit, and… what is he thinking? He seems a bit of an innocent to Janine’s greater experience and… yeah, it’s performance, but is he impervious to any physical sensation? What does it mean for Sherlock to kiss anyone? Is there any awakening that occurs here? If nothing else… fic, please.

Also, because, that mouth. Damn.

Okay. So.

What I love best in this scene, however, is Sherlock’s surprise at John being armed within an inch of his life. Having accepted parameters that John himself has established - been establishing almost since they met, no matter how much they might have weakened by the wedding - Sherlock has done what John characteristically does and put him into a clearly defined box: John is (now) a suburban husband. He’s safe. ‘Normal’. Predictable,

except when he’s really not.

So that what we have is a Sherlock who isn’t quite seeing what’s going on with John - who can’t, in a way,  _allow_  himself to see subtleties in John, because one will open the door on a flood that Sherlock is increasingly unable to contain. His solution to the problem that emerges between them in the final moments of “The Sign of Three” is to fit John into an blunt role that precludes sentimental attachment - ironically, one that John patently fails to fit into.

At the same time, Sherlock performs a version of himself for John’s benefit - (apparently) cold, manipulative, devoid of “human error” and sentiment, and one that John is apparently all too willing to accept,

no matter that  _we_  know how very easy it is to hit Sherlock where it hurts.

Just one word - “Redbeard” - and Sherlock is a different kind of child; less sulky adolescent than emotional innocent, and John doesn’t even realize that it’s possible, though they’re standing right next to each other.

TBC


	13. His Last Vow 3Ca

I think this is just going to be about the mind palace sequence and things leading up to it, because, damn. I don’t know that I’m saying anything even remotely unique here; since people generally liked this sequence, there was a lot of early analysis that was quite insightful, and I’m sure I’m drawing quite a bit from what I read in the immediate wake of the episode. 

Just a quick note on the earlier post; I say that Mary (in the specter of the skull on the wall) and Janine are catalysts for John and Sherlock’s estrangement at 221B, but make no mistake - they’re doing a perfectly good job of estranging themselves from one another without outside assistance. J and M are, in this case, closer to excuses than reasons for John and Sherlock’s estrangement, Sherlock kind of rationalizing John’s distance by way of his marriage - and that for having something of an affinity with Mary himself - and John allowing himself to believe, as I said earlier, the very least of Sherlock, any and all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. They both seem to be reeling a bit - destabilized - from their intense closeness in TSoT, and I continue to think that John, in particular, is still working through the pain of Sherlock’s ‘death’, protecting himself through emotional distance in the only way he knows how. Only now, Sherlock is an active participant in John’s self-delusion - he practically hands that colder, more manipulative persona to him on a plate, and John, for his part, seems to accept it without question.

So that, ostensible camaraderie notwithstanding, the composition of the lobby scene speaks of nothing so much as conflict. I’ve talked a bit about this in my discussion of John earlier, but let’s see a little more. Because here, Sherlock is a ‘machine’, if you will, and in that sense it’s interesting how industrial the backdrop to their conversation - to John’s perception of Sherlock’s inhumanness - really is.

This is a world of lines - boxes, really, and look how neatly both John and Sherlock fit inside them.

There is nothing organic here - nothing  _human_  - and this is what each has done to the other in the period between the all-too-human TSoT and now. They are protecting themselves (and, in Sherlock’s case, the other); Sherlock’s observation about human error seems especially calculated (ha!) in this sense, and especially disingenuous for the fact that we have just witnessed him being entirely human back at 221B.

As an aside, it’s interesting that at the end of the 221B scene, we have Sherlock excited about Magnussen’s readiness to negotiate

despite the fact that even we get a feeling that Magnussen is nothing of the sort. Sherlock is unusually naive here; or, rather, he’s playing by rules that Magnussen - having peed in the fireplace - has demonstrated that he does not abide by. This is Sherlock’s fundamental innocence on display - an innocence he will have lost by the end of the episode.

So there we are at the office building; they go up on Janine’s invitation, John’s horror over Sherlock’s manipulation (and, perhaps,  _how_  he’s manipulating) palpable. And then, Mary.

And one thing I love here, in terms of Sherlock’s own character, is how utterly shocked he really is. This is, in many ways, the first real knock to his innocence - he’s simply never suspected, I think, that Mary could be  _this_  person. He’s known she’s a liar, but, purposefully or not, he disregards that particular deduction, so that here he is literally speechless.

And he does something here that’s an interesting, if miscalculated, move. He tells Mary, “No you won’t, Mrs. Watson” to the question of her killing him

and it makes her falter, for just a moment; he’s played the John card, because, I think, he assumes that Mary’s love of John is like his: selfless, wanting only what John wants no matter the cost to himself. And - let me be clear here - Mary’s love of John is nothing more than the sum total of her life experiences. She’s disillusioned (we are told), she’s been hard, cold, alone, and she seems to be holding on to John with every last fiber of her being. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do to keep John (safe), and that’s a critical thing that Sherlock learns in the moment when she shoots him - the thing he will come back to when he makes his decision to encourage John to trust her. Which I’ll return to later.

So it is that Sherlock appeals to their greatest point of affinity, only to discover that his love and Mary’s are not quite the same; and, as much as I do not want to see Sherlock shot, there’s a note of condescension in his voice here that… on my more PMS-y days, I can’t not sympathize, in the broadest sense, with Mary’s desire to shoot. Sherlock here takes an interestingly masculinist tack in trying to dissuade her, no matter that it comes from a mistaken sense that her love of John is as altruistic as his own, and it backfires spectacularly. He makes her a wife, and she asserts that she’s an assassin as well; it’s a very interestingly gendered moment, and one that mitigates, however momentarily, my horror that she shoots.

And one thing that’s rather lovely here is that, intentional or not, this shot above (the visual one, not the gun one) also echoes  _Citizen Kane_  a bit in its extreme low angle. We see Kane like this as well, when his entire world is coming apart at the seams - when he’s in an emotionally precarious position; and so, too, is Sherlock in a similar position. He’s thought one thing of Mary - assumed she played by the same rules he does - only to discover the hard way that she understands love quite differently (he’ll do the same thing with Magnussen later - two people, then, who are playing with a different set of rules altogether). And so here, we see the beginnings of a shift, I think, in how Sherlock has (made/allowed himself to) perceived Mary. 

And thus are we thrust into the mind palace, and what. a. sequence. There’s nothing especially subtle about it, and others have noticed elements of the mise en scene - the design, in particular - that I draw on here, because it’s simply striking and overwhelmingly symbolic.

Molly, the calm voice of realization and urgency.

Anderson, an echo of Molly’s expertise, reinforcing what she’s said, driving it home

(some people have called him a Greek chorus, which seems appropriate here).

And Mycroft; and isn’t it interesting that the light of his office here in Sherlock’s mind

looks like nothing so much as a high-stakes chessboard (right down to the Queen behind him)? Sherlock’s been accustomed to calling his work a ‘game’, and that’s always carried with it connotations of flippancy and a blatant disregard for its real-life stakes. Yet here, we get a different sense of the game, as something that Sherlock’s been playing his entire life, fraught with feelings of inadequacy and even failure 

that, here, render him a child at Mycroft’s always-adult feet. This is one of the most poignant moments of the entire episode, exposing the essence of Sherlock’s feelings of inadequacy and drive to  _understand_.

Having thus been brought to a kind of primal state, everything we see of Sherlock from here on in is emblematic of his deepest, most closely held, rawest emotions. Mycroft tells Sherlock to find the thing that will keep him calm, and Sherlock immediately sets out to find… John, I would think. Who is kept from him by Mary, shooting him in her wedding dress,

ripping a hole in his heart

and revealing the  _real_  effect that John’s marriage has had on Sherlock. 

Yet - and this is absolutely NOT my own idea, but is indebted to [alabellecreation](http://sherlockmeta.tumblr.com/post/73894488779/any-thoughts-on-why-we-dont-see-john-in-sherlocks) \- it turns out that John isn’t someone who Sherlock keeps behind a door in his mind; at least, not anymore. John  _is_  the mind palace - its corridors, stairwell, walls are all reminders of Sherlock’s life with John, reminiscent of their first case together

of the corridor down which John ran to save Sherlock that first night together (<— not my idea!!).

Much of the mind palace is an amalgam of all things John, but absolutely not John-neutral. Rather, it’s the visual representation of what John means to Sherlock: their camaraderie, the way John has saved Sherlock, the comfort of their life together. John is, quite literally here,  _everything_  to Sherlock - his best self.

And then there’s the part of Sherlock that he keeps locked away; the part that, arguably, we get just a taste of when he’s high. This is Sherlock’s animal mind, the deepest, darkest part of his psyche - the things he’s afraid of in himself, that he keeps under lock and key. How fitting, then, that it’s embodied in an exponentially more deranged Moriarty.

And yet, for as terrifying as Moriarty is here, he’s first and foremost the voice of Sherlock’s fears, his deepest pain, and what is it that Sherlock fears most? Not defeat, not intellectual inferiority, but pain, loss, heartbreak. Here he feels nothing but pain, both physical and emotional

and it’s this that literally brings him to his knees,

brings tears to his eyes.

And, of course, it’s only John who can bring him back. Redbeard may be able to keep Sherlock calm when he needs it

comforting the trusting, betrayed child he keeps inside, but it’s only his deepest, Moriarty-embodied fears for John’s safety

that bring Sherlock back to life

prepared to fight his way back

and all of it -  _all of it_  - for John,

who has  _absolutely no way of knowing_ any of this.


	14. His Last Vow 3Cb

Let’s get this sucker done; it’s eating up valuable real estate in my head.

So. We left Sherlock as he was coming to consciousness on the operating table, and from here on in he’s pretty much got one goal, I think: keep John safe. I think that, as far as he’s concerned, Mary is an as-yet unknown quantity. She shot him (dangerous), and his first, clearest concern is to warn John.

Thus does he awaken with Mary’s name on his lips, and thus does he move, or, I would think, arrange to have moved John’s chair back to its familiar place, with the distinctive bottle of Clair de la Lune strategically placed next to it. I don’t think he wakes up trusting Mary, but neither is he prepared to write her off just yet. Sentiment? Perhaps; but it’s also clear that Mary seems overwhelmingly concerned with John, and I think that’s something that Sherlock can understand.

In this sense, I think it means something to Sherlock that Mary doesn’t attempt to kill him in hospital, but simply warns him from letting John know the truth. This won’t do, of course, and Sherlock’s not about to keep John in the dark, but before we can get there, we have the scene with Janine to look at, and what a lovely little interlude it is. She’s hurt, but nobody’s patsy, and Sherlock is… surprisingly soft and even appreciative of her.

Really, they’re a bit lovely here - perfectly matched in their way, and… well, I just like Janine, what can I say? And Sherlock seems to like her as well; perhaps not sexually

(“after we were married,” my ass), but certainly for her spunk

and even her unquenchable need to get her own back.

Ah, Janine, we hardly knew you. 

But this is the thing with Sherlock. When he doesn’t categorize people - when he doesn’t stuff them into expected boxes of gender or profession or sexuality or whatever - he  _sees_  them for who they are. He seems to see Janine here, once she’s freed from the role of “girlfriend” necessitated by his charade, and, thus released, she’s revealed to have an inner life - one that involves a little house in Sussex, though she’s getting rid of the bee hives - and that, to my mind, is lovely.

I think Sherlock has this realization with Mary as well. He’s seen her, to a certain extent, in the period leading up to the wedding, and only when he makes the mistake of explicitly gendering her - “Mrs. Watson” - does he fail to understand her. After the shooting, he gives her the opportunity to show herself again; he seems to have a nascent respect for her intelligence, her experience, her ruthless single-mindedness, and in the scene at the empty houses he gives her the chance to be seen for who she is - who he thinks she may be.

And she lives up to his expectations, both in her recognition of the houses (“30 seconds”), and in her sharpshooting. Remember, Sherlock is someone who really is drawn to intelligent, dangerous people in his own right. John may be ‘abnormally attracted’ to them, but Sherlock seems to find in them kindred spirits of a sort: Moriarty, and then Mary after him.

Yet, where Moriarty targets John, thus irrevocably sealing his place as an adversary to Sherlock, Mary  _protects_  him (for, perhaps, her own definition of protection), and that makes all the difference. Why does Sherlock forgive Mary? Because it’s not about him - it never has been. It’s always been about John, and whatever else you can say about Mary, she is prepared to kill for him. Questions of the purity or selflessness of her love, I think, are irrelevant here, particularly insofar as I think Sherlock views his own selfless love as something of an unfortunate liability. I almost wonder if he doesn’t admire - even aspire to - Mary’s kind of love: possessive, ruthless, unquestioning, unhesitant. 

So that, when they confront one another, he’s (openly) angry with her for one thing, and one thing only:

that she stupidly didn’t come to him for help first, and thus avoid all this drama.

And when he turns to flip on the lights, there’s a wonderful moment when he looks as though he might cry. Sherlock would probably perceive this as a weakness, and he’d certainly never own it, I think, but in this moment - and throughout the confrontation at 221B - it’s  _Sherlock_  who is revealed to have developed empathy, and not just for John. He loves John, identifies with Mary, and I think he feels both their pain keenly in addition to his own  -

and I think it’s for this reason that he seems so pained by every dig that John makes at Mary

every lie that Mary reveals to John

everything that hurts John just a bit more

no matter that he’s got his own pain to contend with, both physical

and emotional.

Which is to say, here we have three people who are hurting - and hurting each other - and of all of them, it’s the ostensibly cold and mechanical Sherlock who seems to see - and feel - it all. What a difference a few years, one fall, and one extended experience of crushing loneliness makes.

So why does Sherlock tell John he can trust Mary?

Because he  _can_ , as far as Sherlock reckons. Mary, for all her danger and all her flaws, for all that she shot Sherlock,

Mary will  _kill_  to keep John safe, and that’s all that’s ever really mattered to Sherlock. He doesn’t even conceive of himself as someone who could make John happy, and he  _wants_  John to be happy so much. John was happy(ish) with the Mary he thought he had married, but now it turns out that she is  _exactly_ John’s type,

critically coming in a physical form he can accept and allow himself to love, and  _she will kill for him_. As far as Sherlock is concerned, she is the  _only_  acceptable substitute - no,  _surrogate_  - for himself, and so, to paraphrase, is it truly such a surprise that Sherlock practically pushes John into her arms?

In order to ensure John’s future happiness, inextricably linked to Mary’s, Sherlock, too, is prepared to do anything, even if it involves, as he says, making a deal with the devil. Of course he’s got a backup plan, but here again, Sherlock is playing by the rules, and Magnussen absolutely isn’t, so that when the great reveal comes it constitutes “a very palpable hit.” Sherlock is almost physically ill here at his dismayed realization

shocked beyond the speaking of it,

reeling with it

(and look how his body lists here, weaving as though he might collapse). Sherlock has  _failed_  John and cannot even meet his eyes

and I can’t help but think that this is something he’ll never forgive himself for. 

Thus, having sunk as far as he can, emotionally, having failed to protect John where Mary wouldn’t - or so i think he believes - Sherlock allows his animal instincts to take over - to do what Mary wouldn’t hesitate to do. Lacking that cold killer instinct, he has to be roused to murder,

and it’s all very Eisensteinian,

and once roused, Sherlock is an unstoppable force. We always know who it is he’s doing this for: John,

only John,

no matter the cost to himself,

which, as it turns out, is considerable.

And so Sherlock kills

tells John it’s for  _Mary_  in a stance and voice that’s all bravado,

and all that despite the fact that Sherlock has, in fact,

utterly lost his innocence.

And by the time they come together to say goodbye, Sherlock can barely keep it in. Where John has buried his feelings so deep inside a cocoon of self-protection that they can barely be discerned, Sherlock’s are riding perilously close to the surface; yet, still mostly where John can’t see

(or maybe simply cannot bring himself to look).

And Sherlock’s heart is breaking here

but not in so many words.

John’s is as well, but he’s equally unable to articulate it, and so they part in the belief that neither is as essential to the other as they are. We know that Sherlock and John mean nothing less than the world to one another, but they don’t know that of each other, and  _this_  - more than anything that’s come to pass - is both the great tragedy and the great promise of series three.

Which is to say, well, if you’ll indulge me, there’s a scene from Charlotte Bronte’s  _Jane Eyre_  that keeps coming to mind when I mull all of this over, and I’d like to quote it in full:

> “Now is my time to slip away,” thought I: but the tones that then severed the air arrested me.  Mrs. Fairfax had said Mr. Rochester possessed a fine voice: he did—a mellow, powerful bass, into which he threw his own feeling, his own force; finding a way through the ear to the heart, and there waking sensation strangely.  I waited till the last deep and full vibration had expired—till the tide of talk, checked an instant, had resumed its flow; I then quitted my sheltered corner and made my exit by the side-door, which was fortunately near.  Thence a narrow passage led into the hall: in crossing it, I perceived my sandal was loose; I stopped to tie it, kneeling down for that purpose on the mat at the foot of the staircase.  I heard the dining-room door unclose; a gentleman came out; rising hastily, I stood face to face with him: it was Mr. Rochester.
> 
> “How do you do?” he asked.
> 
> “I am very well, sir.”
> 
> “Why did you not come and speak to me in the room?”
> 
> I thought I might have retorted the question on him who put it: but I would not take that freedom.  I answered—
> 
> “I did not wish to disturb you, as you seemed engaged, sir.”
> 
> “What have you been doing during my absence?”
> 
> “Nothing particular; teaching Adèle as usual.”
> 
> “And getting a good deal paler than you were—as I saw at first sight.  What is the matter?”
> 
> “Nothing at all, sir.”
> 
> “Did you take any cold that night you half drowned me?”
> 
> “Not the least.”
> 
> “Return to the drawing-room: you are deserting too early.”
> 
> “I am tired, sir.”
> 
> He looked at me for a minute.
> 
> “And a little depressed,” he said.  “What about?  Tell me.”
> 
> “Nothing—nothing, sir.  I am not depressed.”
> 
> “But I affirm that you are: so much depressed that a few more words would bring tears to your eyes—indeed, they are there now, shining and swimming; and a bead has slipped from the lash and fallen on to the flag.  If I had time, and was not in mortal dread of some prating prig of a servant passing, I would know what all this means.  Well, to-night I excuse you; but understand that so long as my visitors stay, I expect you to appear in the drawing-room every evening; it is my wish; don’t neglect it.  Now go, and send Sophie for Adèle.  Good-night, my—”  He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.

It’s that final “my —” that I keep snagging on, because this is the essence of this kind of pining romance, to my mind. We know here how Jane feels - it punctuates everything she writes; but - and this is neatly rendered, insofar as this is Jane’s first-person account - we also know how  _Rochester_  feels, for all that Jane doesn’t seem to see or understand it. I’m reluctant to cast either character into one of these more overtly romantic roles, and yet the broad parameters of their romance (in the broad sense of the word) is quite similar. In both stories, we have two people who come to each other from quite different backgrounds and circumstances, who seem to click without quite knowing why. For very different reasons, each thinks themselves unfit for the love of the other, and yet loves regardless. And  _we_  - the reader, the audience -  _we_  are uniquely situated to appreciate how each character feels despite the characters’ own inability (or unwillingness) to see it in themselves and one another. But those feelings are there, and we have now been put in a position of wanting true understanding to occur.

As much as we want Jane to understand that Rochester does, in fact, care for her as she cares for him, we desperately want John to see that Sherlock is, in fact, just as human as him - to accept not only Sherlock’s love of him, but his own for Sherlock. And, again, I don’t mean this in a prescriptive sexual sense (not that I would be unhappy to see it), but in the broadest sense of romance as that thing that binds two people inextricably together and lets them know what each means to the other. That gives them the warmth, satisfaction, happiness that comes both of loving and being loved. They’re both  _so close_  - we can  _see_ it, dammit - but they still have a way to go. 

And that’s my hope for the show going forward, in whatever form TPTB choose to realize it.

Wrap-up post to follow.


	15. In Conclusion

I don't have great conclusions or insightful prognostication, I'm afraid. I honestly don't know what's coming next, particularly with Mary. I have some thoughts and hopes for her storyline, but as they're little more than speculation - and I am terrible at speculation - I'll keep them to myself. I come away from series three knowing one thing and believing one other thing strongly:

I know that we've been given access to Sherlock's feelings that John has not had, that we've been made to feel John's lack of awareness (and even rejection of what little he does discern) keenly, and thus we've been positioned for a resolution that I think is yet to come. It's possible - so very slightly possible - that Sherlock's murder of Magnussen and subsequent statement that Mary is now safe constitutes that resolution, except that John has been singularly clueless to this point, and he doesn't seem any less bewildered in its wake. On top of this, given the the distance of their parting on the tarmac, I think there's a reckoning - a big one - yet to come, but that it's going to need some catalyst to actually take place. As some have observed, there's a perfect ACD canon opportunity for this in "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs," in which Watson writes,

> I felt a sudden hot sear as if a red-hot iron had been pressed to my thigh. There was a crash as Holmes’s pistol came down on the man’s head. I had a vision of him sprawling upon the floor with blood running down his face while Holmes rummaged him for weapons. Then my friend’s wiry arms were round me, and he was leading me to a chair.
> 
> “You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!”
> 
> It was worth a wound — it was worth many wounds — to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.

John has consistently failed to see Sherlock's feelings for him throughout series three; even at the end of "The Sign of Three," when he sees  _something_ , I think John doesn't understand it - it doesn't fit in with what he (thinks he) knows of Sherlock, and he pushes away any hint that it might actually mean what it looks like. In this sense, I think it will take a catalyst of this magnitude for John to see past Sherlock's own facade of indifference to the heart underneath, but I do think that what we've seen over the course of series three suggests it's coming.

This is the thing I know. The thing I believe is that Sherlock has encouraged John to remain with Mary for one reason above all others: she may or may not be trustworthy, but she is prepared to kill to keep John (safe), and for Sherlock that's all that matters. I don't know that Sherlock trusts her further than his concern for John's continued well-being, but I believe that this, more than anything, is what motivates him to encourage John to reconcile with her despite everything that's come before. And I believe that her feelings for John are sincere, that she actually is willing to kill for him, that she loves him in the only way she knows how, and that the three of them are allied in this thing, if no others. I know what I'd like to see happen with Mary, but as I say, I'm terrible at speculation and won't get into it here. Suffice it to say, I think they're more on the same page than not by the end of series three.

Of all the moments in this series, I think this 

is my very favorite, because it pretty much says everything you need to know about where John and Sherlock stand with each other throughout. For all that it takes place in "The Empty Hearse," this encapsulates both characters throughout all of series three: John and Sherlock occupying opposite ends of the frame, turned away from each other; apart, yet, not entirely disconnected. There's more than one visual bridge connecting them - the table and couch, the papers pinned to the wall. They may not be seeing each other here - literally, as it turns out - but they remain as connected as ever. John, who has been looking at the papers as Sherlock attends to his 'clients', seems a bit homesick here. He's interested in what Sherlock is doing, almost against his will, and in this very moment he's standing in shadow, looking down (in a shot - lighting inclusive - that's quite reminiscent of the first time we see Sherlock looking out the window of 221B), casting a long, melancholy shadow on the floor. He wants to be there, but absolutely cannot say it in so many words, and so he keeps it to himself  - never says anything to Sherlock, who cannot imagine that John would want to be back at this point.

For his part, Sherlock is desperately trying to hide the evidence of his humanness. His 'ordinary' parents are his Achilles heel here - proof positive that he didn't just emerge, fully formed, from the primordial ooze, a cold, rational thinking machine. He's a son - all too human and  _loved_ , and Sherlock is neither ready for John to see it, nor does he realize what it might mean to John. For Sherlock, that humanness is nothing less than a liability, something that gets away from him in "The Sign of Three," only to be brutally tamped down on in the aftermath.

In this sense, this shot above isn't qualitatively different from these contrasting shots, mere seconds apart, at the end of "His Last Vow,"

 

when neither can look at the other anymore, for fear of letting loose all those things they keep so locked up - and isn't it fascinating that, throughout this entire conversation, they occupy the same side of the frame? I think they're much closer here than either thinks - too close to see clearly, perhaps.

And there's something to be said for the fact that this isn't the last we see of them. These expressions above say a lot, but so do these below - more, in fact. The flash of  _hope_  on Sherlock's face when Mycroft calls him back

and the hint of happiness on John's when the plane returns Sherlock to him.

They're coming back together, and they're both pretty pleased about it - in their own repressed way.

And that, my friends, is all I've got. Thanks for reading, and happy hiatus.


End file.
